I guess a writer never stops writing, whether that is in their heads or actually putting the words down. Usually when I hit a stumbling block it is because I haven't thought the plot all the way through and my brain immediately says - meandering, not focused, so I stop and reassess. This time when I stumbled I sat down and wrote out most of the plot again and my block, if you like - I don't actually believe in writer's block - was the complexity of it and the usual writer's doubts and wails of 'I can't do this, it's too damned difficult'. Then one tends to have a psychotic conversation with oneself which tends to go - you thought up the damned thing, so of course you can write it. So on and so forth.
But I did have a serious think about it last night and I realized, in my usual fashion, that it wasn't a case of can't but that I was rushing the thing. While 30k isn't even halfway, I probably should have written another 30k around that first 30k for it to make sense to a reader. Yes, it is first draft and doesn't 'matter' but in a way it does, because I am missing chunks that should, according to me, be in the story.
That's partly *because* I hadn't thought it all the way through. But then, the damned characters hadn't revealed themselves to me properly. So I'll blame them.
Now the vision I have to write out is of a completely different priest to the one I had. Because, of course, there is more than one. I know that makes sense only to me, but there you go. Writer's brain and all that.
I was talking to my BFF on Sunday and she said in her BFF fashion, so where did you get off being so damned smart. What the heck is a Fibonacci number anyway? To which I laughed and said, Google is my friend. Although I did know about Fibonacci because, well, I'd read about him a long time ago in another novel... Surprising what you learn when you don't even
mean to.
But I did have a serious think about it last night and I realized, in my usual fashion, that it wasn't a case of can't but that I was rushing the thing. While 30k isn't even halfway, I probably should have written another 30k around that first 30k for it to make sense to a reader. Yes, it is first draft and doesn't 'matter' but in a way it does, because I am missing chunks that should, according to me, be in the story.
That's partly *because* I hadn't thought it all the way through. But then, the damned characters hadn't revealed themselves to me properly. So I'll blame them.
Now the vision I have to write out is of a completely different priest to the one I had. Because, of course, there is more than one. I know that makes sense only to me, but there you go. Writer's brain and all that.
I was talking to my BFF on Sunday and she said in her BFF fashion, so where did you get off being so damned smart. What the heck is a Fibonacci number anyway? To which I laughed and said, Google is my friend. Although I did know about Fibonacci because, well, I'd read about him a long time ago in another novel... Surprising what you learn when you don't even
mean to.
RSS Feed