Recently I hit a wall with my writing. I had been sprinting along, getting the words down, seeing the end of my first draft in sight. Then I noticed my sprint had slowed to a jog. Before I knew what was happening I was kicking stones at the side of the road whining like a 3-year-old saying, “My legs are tired.”
 |
| Illustration copyright Matt Clare at Mono Design |
Part of my problem is I thought that when I
reached 85,000 words I would be pretty close to completing my first draft. But
84,000 words in, I realise I have probably got a good 15,000 to go. This has
involved a reassessment of time frames and required me to pluck a whole bundle
of new energy out of thin air.
Another issue is my love of editing. I am
so looking forward to this part of the process that I wasn’t even 20,000 words
in before I started saying, “I wish I was finished so I could be editing now.”
As I have mentioned previously, patience is not my strong point.
But more than these factors I came to
realise that the voices in my head that once told me, “Yeah, this is great,
keep going,” had started saying, “Seriously? Why would anyone want to read
that?”
On reflection I realised the loudest voice
had sprung to life after someone from my writer’s group had critiqued my work.
She had questioned the believability of the character in my book.
Given the book I am writing is a memoir,
and the character is me, it had started a chain reaction of self doubt about my
writing, my ability to share a story in a meaningful way and whether or not I
had the right to exist on the page (or at all, but that is another blog : ).
I found myself wanting to justify my
“character’s” choices to her, to give overly elaborate explanations as to why I
acted the way I did. It was driving me absolutely nuts and made me feel like
giving up on my book.
So I took a break for a week. Spent a load
of time on twitter. Read some novels. Then I told that voice that this first
draft is not for publication so it really doesn’t matter what goes on the page.
I don’t have to show anyone if I don’t want to.
This process has been very freeing and has
helped me realise that some people are going to connect to my book and my
character, some people are not. That’s the way it is with all creative
offerings.
This whole process has been really helpful
in strengthening my resolve to write the book I want
to write, not the book I think someone else wants to hear. There are more than
7 billion people in the world, surely some of them will relate!
Have you had an experience like this? How
did you keep going with your first draft?
No comments:
Post a Comment