The Writing Moment
It was the best of stuff and the worse of crap.
I’m working on two items in parallel: a new novel and a finished novel now undergoing its fifth revision.
The new project has that exciting blush attached. Unencumbered by an ending, story and characters emerge through flash floods of thoughts and poured through fingers and keyboards into the ‘puter, evolving into a novel. Great, let’s keep it going. It’s the fun, creative part, where anything goes. I’ll see if it works later.
Meanwhile, on the editing side, I’m facing the dark side of my process. The chapter under the knife in the finished novel makes me gag and cringe. What happened here? Why isn’t it working, I whine to myself. Can no one save me? Or it?
No, this is up to me. After working on it the other day, I shut it down and told myself, leave it for a bit. Let it vacate my mind. Let it ferment untouched and see what happens after the interval. Perhaps insights will arrive; or maybe it won’t seem as bad.
Good plan but when I took it back up, insights were like peace talks with Russia: nothing there. And it was just as bad as before. As waiting didn’t work, I’ve concluded, I’ll increase focus and concentration, drop back one chapter, and read back into it. On reflection, after writing that, I can see that I was confused about what I was writing about, feeling through it, and unsuccessfully capturing and refining what I know, what I’m showing, and its impact on the story. Part of that is that although the novel is in its fifth cycle of revision and editing, this chapter was added in during the fourth round. I thought it was needed; I still feel it might be, but I’m flexible on the matter. I’ll see how it flows.
Alright, time to coffee up so I can novel up and work through this revision.
Happy writing, y’all. Cheers
The Writing Moment
It’s hard to stop writing when it’s blistering along but the allocated time has skidded to an end. Difficult to push the pause button while editing and revising the other project when the timing bell rings to announce, move on to the next matter.
Doesn’t help that the muses are especially active, like they’ve been gorging on chocolate cake and chugging coffee. They just don’t want to stop and it pains me to tell them that I am.
I need a longer day or the means to carve time out of everything else going on. How much sleep is really needed anyway?
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote
It is all about exploring for me, feeling the way through dim light, hands outstretched, trying to understand what I feel.
The Writing Moment
Here was something freaky for me.
In one chapter of the work in progress, I encountered a scene where the main character suffered from vertigo. I’d experienced vertigo a few weeks ago. I never had vertigo before but this scene spelled it out exactly as I’d experienced it. Reading it, I remember writing the scene in early last fall.
Yeah, I’m astonished. Blown away, even. It induced a weird sense of deja vu, like I’d seen what was going to happen to myself and put it into my novel.
Michael Seidel, writer 