Write-a-thon running total: 4,374 words out of 12,000, so nearly a thousand words since my last update. This is good and bad: good because they are good words, much more “true north” words. I am finding my way. Bad because I must produce more quickly the next three weeks to meet my goal, and this means that if I find out soon that these words aren’t as true north as I think they are, well, then I will have some long days trying to regroup and catch up (grin).
Although I understand the benefits of writing events like NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy, it is really not my way to blow past sections of story that I know in my bones aren’t working just to meet a wordcount goal. In my experience, glaring wrong turns just lead to dead ends in the story. Wrong turns can be fixed, but not (at least for me) by “writing my way through them.” I actually just have to go back and find the better path. I admire and envy the writers who can simply switch gears from one scene to the next and “act as if” what came before has led them unerringly to the new place. But me, I find that jumping track that way just leads me to make new mistakes rather than rectifying old ones.
I’m enjoying it. And I’m finding it difficult, like all writers with other jobs, to make the brain switch back and forth between writing, editing, board-chairing… One of the essential eternal wrestles of this culture, no? One part of this brain-switching challenge that is hard to explain is that writing brings up all sorts of things from the tunnels within the writer; some of those things are fun to feel/imagine/live, and some of them are not. It might just be “a story,” but parts of it come from deep and sometimes unexpected places, with sometimes unexpected results. And it affects my moods, and sometimes colors my perception of the “real world” (whatever that is). I feel things as true that are not actually true for me right now, even though they may once have been (or will be again). I feel old fears and old losses and old confusions, and sometimes I don’t know where the fuck they come from until I’m on the other side of them and can see, Oh, it’s a writing thing.
Sometimes it’s damned hard to step away from the story world without bringing the story along. In fact, I think it’s mostly impossible. Learning to make the brain-switch anyway, in spite of it all, is a necessary skill, and I have no idea how to ‘teach” it because I’m still learning it myself. But I’m lucky to live with another writer and see this happening to someone else enough that I understand it’s an actual process, an actual feature of being an artist. Otherwise I might just think I was nuts.
Now I will go do something else and see if I can glide back into the rational world. Enjoy your day.
Yeah to all of the above.
Put some tails in your tale. Lop the little bastards off later, you little lopping fool, you 🙂
Tim O’Brien
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/08/telling-tails/7533/1/
Of course, none of this will help, but it’s fun to pretend it could.
Because I’m a self-absorbed, narcissistic idiot of late, I forgot to mention … if you append lots of tails everywhere in your tale, then remove the ones that seem particularly asinine on 2nd, 3rd, 4th reads, a kind of path forms all by itself. For a rookie like me, that sort of works. Sort of. For an old hand like you … jesus, drink some more wine.
Sounds like you are doing great to me – that’s a lot of words. And who says the words that get cut don’t count? I think all the words you write should count – even the ones that get deleted.
I’m guessing that some writers may find it easier to make those kind of switches because the majority of them don’t get as far into their stories as you do, and I bet most of their stories don’t get as far inside readers as yours do either.
I admire what you are doing here. Thanks for the update.
I’m with Jennifer.
Kelley, you are doing amazing work. People who ring up the word count on a daily basis have that ability, so ok, that’s grand. But what you’re doing is far more courageous. Really forcing yourself to get at it, which means slow going some days, but richer, braver, whatever you want to call it.
And for completely selfish reasons (as your reader) I say take your time.