Write, don't edit

I am happy to report that I am back on the writing wagon, after a brief stumble late last week. So, hooray for the resumption of forward progress! That progress is a bit slower than it has been up to now, but I've averaged at least my 500 word quota per day over the weekend.

Said weekend was fraught with serious problems on the personal front (which are still ongoing and shall be for the foreseeable future), and in the course of dealing with those problems, I managed to lose track of exact word counts, but I do know what the overall word count of the WIP was as of last night, and it has put the first draft over 28% complete:

It's always interesting to see how confronting problems in my non-writing life affects my writing progress. Sometimes, I will use the writing to "self-medicate" by diving into it even more obsessively, finding a measure of comfort, I suppose, in my complete control over the fictional world I'm building and certainly a healthy dose of escapism.

However, no neurotic worthy of the label would sit still indefinitely for creating something positive out of a negative experience; it's contrary to the by-laws of our guild. Accordingly, as the excrement has impacted the air circulation device, I've found myself periodically drifting toward really unproductive thoughts about my novel. Contrary to the approach I've been espousing in this blog and trying valiantly to live up to, I've found myself spending time editing the old rather than churning out the new. Part of that is due to my brain being filled with a lot of extraneous worry and more chaos than normal--it's damned hard to map out where I want a scene to go (or even start) when three or four real-life crises are pounding on the window and screeching like manic owls.

But another factor in my reversion to revision over slogging forward through new territory is that my personal difficulties have simply made me more vulnerable to the host of fears that tend to plague most writers, especially we of the unpublished variety.  I know this, and I've tried hard over the past few days to keep my editorial busyworking to a minimum, but I was still grateful for the timing of today's entry on Kristen Lamb's Blog, Editing-Meet the Novel-Killer.

The battle against Scenezilla

Sorry to be so uncommunicative this week, but you see, I've been fighting a monster. I call it Scenezilla.

You see, I started working on a scene in my novel--a pivotal scene in which the protagonist is forced to make a decision he doesn't want to make--waaay back on June 30. Now, I realize that June 30 was a mere week ago and that it might not seem like a long time to be working on such an important scene.

But you see, I've been writing at a deliberately breakneck pace up till now. The idea is to reach the end of the story so that I will have a Completed First Draft (cue celestial choir). The near-term goal of this undertaking is, in fact, the Completed First Draft. It's the name of the game, the water under my raft, the wind beneath my wings (cue Bette Midler, then club her in the throat with a two-by-four before she finishes the first bar).

Back to the grindstone... thank God

Yesterday was a slow-starter. Most of the time I spent on the novel was applied to plotting in greater detail the next three big scenes. This was necessary because the plotting I've done so far has kind of been like planning a road and marking where I think it's going to go with little dots of spray paint. Then, as I actually write, I find the places where the ground is to hard to dig or there are obstacles that I don't want to try to write around, or I just find a better or more interesting direction.

In other words, writing can trump plotting, particularly when it comes to details. So where I ended up on the last big scene did not deposit the story precisely at the place that I had expected when I was plotting. Therefore, re-plotting was necessary.

Once I was ready to start writing, though, I found my reserves of enthusiasm were greatly depleted. This was due to several factors. Fortunately, a good friend called late last night to slap me upside the head with some common sense. At the time he called, I only had 450 words written and was struggling to reach the 500 word minimum quota. After he called, the writing caught fire and I finally stopped at 1200 words. This means I have officially surpassed the 20% completion mark!

This is a stupid concept that nobody wants to read

As I predicted in yesterday's post, the pace of my writing did indeed slow down yesterday as a result of my having to stop and rework the next portion of my outline. This was necessary because, after actually writing the stuff dictated by my outline so far, the next scenes I had prescribed initially either weren't quite appropriate or just not as good as the ideas I had now.

Still, I managed to do 700 words yesterday, so that's nice!

Interestingly, my subconscious saboteur decided to make another derailment attempt. Last night, I started wondering if maybe my protagonist was the only character I would ever be able to write successfully. (This was brought about by the fact that this is far and away my most successful novel attempt.) I promptly rattled off several other characters I've written successfully (in a separate novel I'm co-authoring), so I beat that attempt at sabotage rather easily.

This morning, however, I was taking a shower and suddenly had the thought pop into my head that my novel plot was stupid. Just silly and stupid and utterly uninteresting to anyone but me. This bit of negativity has been harder to refute, simply because, besides me, nobody has read what I've written yet. I really don't know for sure that my plotline isn't dumb, I have no way of knowing if anyone who doesn't see my face in the mirror every day will find this story compelling. For all I know, people will cringe as they read it and won't progress beyond the first ten pages.

There's a saboteur in my midst!

A funny thing happened to me last night and into today - one of the characters in my novel suddenly became very real to me, despite the fact that I'm still just figuring out who she is. I expected that to happen (creating characters has never been my weak point), but I didn't expect this particular character to take off this soon. It suggests that I will be able to use her a lot more in the plot that I had originally planned. I like that idea!

Oh, and lest I forget to report the daily stats, I wrote 585 words last night, despite a headache. This brings my total up to 2135.

And I've now got a whopping 2% of my first draft written! Yay, me!

I have lofty ambitions for the my weekend productivity: I want to write 1,000 words each on Saturday and Sunday. Think I can do it? I do.

So now we come to this bit of insight into my twisted mind. The story is really coming alive to me now - I'm having fun writing the characters, they are becoming real to me, and I'm really digging the process and feeling extremely positive about the novel. But when I read what I've written, I have this knee-jerk sensation of "oh, this is crap." Now, objectively, I don't think it's crap. I think it's pretty good for the first ten pages of a first draft. I believe in my writing ability and I know that I wouldn't be feeling so positive about the project if what I'm writing really were crap. Why, then, is some part of me so desperate to make me believe that it is?

Maybe it's because my inner self-saboteur is scared to death that I might actually succeed this time. Sorry to disappoint you, chicita. I'm doing this.