A Confession
This is not a secret. For now we'll leave the secrets to Annie. No, this is a confession.
I finally finished Chapter 7. It was excruciating. Not because I got caught up in researching the Napoleonic Wars. Not because a fight scene required my husband's crit to ensure authenticity. No...it was simply because I couldn't get my characters to behave as I'd planned. Why not? Because somehow I started at point a and stupidly skipped all the way to point c.
Only it took me days to realize I even needed point b. Such epiphanies usually come to me in bed or while I'm in the shower or while I'm supposed to be listening to my daughter complain about her friends at school. This one took a whole weekend.
I wonder how writers working to deadline do it. How do they write, write, write, all day long, and still manage to step back enough to visualize the gaps?
What do you do when you get stuck? Walk the dog? Phone a friend? Go shopping? Perhaps surf the Internet?
I finally finished Chapter 7. It was excruciating. Not because I got caught up in researching the Napoleonic Wars. Not because a fight scene required my husband's crit to ensure authenticity. No...it was simply because I couldn't get my characters to behave as I'd planned. Why not? Because somehow I started at point a and stupidly skipped all the way to point c.
Only it took me days to realize I even needed point b. Such epiphanies usually come to me in bed or while I'm in the shower or while I'm supposed to be listening to my daughter complain about her friends at school. This one took a whole weekend.
I wonder how writers working to deadline do it. How do they write, write, write, all day long, and still manage to step back enough to visualize the gaps?
What do you do when you get stuck? Walk the dog? Phone a friend? Go shopping? Perhaps surf the Internet?
Labels: Eva
posted by Eva at 6:35 pm
2 Comments:
I do anything and everything I shouldn't be doing! Then in desperation I finally ask hubby for a quick read through (he's my fiercest critique and doesn't sugar coat his words). Then I have more procrastination, usually on the internet,(while I'm pondering hubby's criticisms), before dragging myself back to my w-i-p. I always need to remind myself of the best advice I've ever read 'you cannot fix a blank page'. Then I'm off again...
Go for a walk without my dog (mainly because I don't have one, though I do have a straw cat who spends his entire life asleep in the conservatory...but that's another story - or maybe not), or I ride my bike. Last time I did this I rode along an old railway track re-laid with limestone grit. Unfortunately it rained when I reached the far end (10 miles away from where I'd started). By the time I got home me and my bike looked like we'd spent the day inside a cement mixer. Naturally, my neighbour was in the front garden when I got home and saw me...it's just dawned on me that that's who put the 'For Sale' board in my garden.
Hope this helps, Eva!
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