Monday, March 8, 2010

That's the sound of squealing brakes you're hearing

As you can see from the past couple of posts, I've been having some serious problems getting down to business on my current WIP.  I thought it was merely my personal life getting in the way.  However, today in the shower (I find that I get an inordinate amount of epiphanies in there, something to do with being warm and having a door between little blond person and myself I guess) I realized it wasn't only that.  That was part of it, but the big issue is that there's a problem with the chapter I began last week.  My subconcious realized that and has been screaming at me, quite loudly, to cease, desist, stop, put on the brakes, DON'T WRITE ANOTHER WORD UNTIL YOU FIX THIS.  I was just so busy sorting through all my personal stuff that I couldn't hear that good old trusty Jiminy Cricket, or whoever it is responsible for that voice back there.

The issue, I think and I'm sure my subconscious will correct me if I'm wrong, is that I've meandered into unneccessary territory.  There are better more concise ways of getting in the necessary information than putting it in the chapter currently under construction.  It's late and I'm tired, so I don't have the energy to go back and correct the problem right now.  However, I'm fully confident that once I do my fingers will be flying over the keyboard faster than Superman toward the nearest imminent train wreck or bridge collapse or latest calamity in Lois Lane's life. 

As I thought about this today, I realized another writer, a published one with a bit more experience than me wrote about this very issue on her blog.  It had been so long since I read it I completely forgot about it until I found myself up against the same wall she smashed into writing her first twenty (yes twenty) unpublished, and according to her, mostly unpublishable novels.  So, fellow writers, if you find yourself slogging through uninspired writing mire check out this writing advice from Mette Ivie Harrison and start wielding those backspace and delete keys.  It may just be your ticket back into Writing Nirvana (little nod there to Rebecca at Diary of a Virgin Novelist, another blog that's well worth an aspiring author's time to check out.)  In the words of Porky the Pig 'that's all folks' for tonight at least.

2 comments:

Moll said...

It's kind of funny that you just linked to the Writing Nirvana post (thanks by the way!), I feel like I could write that post again today! And I will probably feel the same way tomorrow and the next!

Angie Paxton said...

Yeah, writing is definitely a cyclical thing or at least it is for me. There will be days when I struggle to put together a sentence and then days when quite literally entire chapters will pour out on the page with seemingly no effort on my part. Why do we put ourselves through this?