Sunday, November 6, 2011

Falling short

I only wrote a little over 1,200 words today. My goal for the weekend, actually my dream goal, was to get ten thousand words ahead of schedule. I had no set plans at all. I was going to take a weekend to just write and get ahead. I would have a buffer of buffers, one that I couldn't ruin no matter what I did (it was a dream goal). Then Friday I went out. Saturday I kept putting off the writing and got caught up doing other things (nothing productive, of course). I did pull off a decent day in the end on Saturday, and thought it would give me the momentum to have an incredible Sunday. It didn't. I just couldn't seem to get started today. Again, I was too distracted. The question would then be, why?

Well, the short answer is: writing is hard.

Not always, but it can be. That's the bad: writing is hard. If writing were easy, everyone would be authors happily writing amazing prose and poems until they were forced to sleep. That's not the case, though. So, when after 10,000 words and author (ok, me) feels like this is some of the worst writing he's done and there's no future beyond the next tiny scene he has in mind, it gets really hard to get back into the writing mood. That's part of the reason I have so many just-started short stories in my past. When the words aren't coming and the ideas feel forced, it makes me question why I'm bothering. That's the bad.

The good: it isn't always like that. Last year, I went through a similar situation. I ended up sending my characters to places I'd traveled, and used overly specific scene description to pad my word count. This continued on and on. Then, somewhere around the 30K mark it all started to come together and a future and purpose for the story created itself. Each story goes through that phase for me, and each time something comes out of it at the end.

The tip: if you get in that mood, just keep writing. At the same time, don't make the mistake I made this weekend. I got so focused on trying to push ahead in word count, that I forgot it was about the writing. I sat not doing the writing, not leaving so I could do the writing, and feeling guilty that the writing wasn't getting done. I went out tonight. I took a break from my apartment and writing. I came back and wrote about a thousand words in 40 minutes straight. What's important is that I came back to the writing. I'm still not sure if this story will truly go anywhere, but I'm trying. That's the most important aspect to writing for me, that I actually do it.

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