So yesterday, I wrote through 4k words in WAFH 2.0 without even realizing it. \u00a0I didn’t feel very productive, because I only did about 500 words at a time before something came up and I got distracted, but by the end of the day, ended up accomplishing a lot. \u00a0That was a pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n
In terms of my writing, I’ve been really out of things since Thanksgiving. \u00a0I finished Genesis Earth<\/em> 5.0 right before the vacation and started outlining WAFH 2.0 immediately after, but…man, the rough draft REALLY sucks. \u00a0Like, sucks so bad I’ll have to completely throw out part III and start from scratch.<\/p>\n Fortunately, I think I’ve got a good idea what to do. \u00a0I’ve outlined about eighteen complete plots and subplots, so that’ll probably help out with keeping things tight. \u00a0The rough draft has a lot of shotgun writing, which means I have a lot of stuff to cut out–and now that I see where things are going, I know how to cut it.<\/p>\n One thing that worries me, however, is that I don’t have a strong driving reason to write this book–or maybe I do, but I just haven’t noticed it yet. \u00a0I’m hoping that’s the case, but I don’t yet know, and it’s really bugging me.<\/p>\n For\u00a0Genesis Earth,<\/em> it was the first line (“Earth was a ghost that haunted me”) and the cryo scene. \u00a0For\u00a0Mercenary Savior,<\/em> it was the ending, and the way it resonated with an old Western I saw as a kid. \u00a0With both projects, I got to a point of desperation somewhere between the first and second drafts where I wanted to throw everything out and never work on it again–but with both projects, that driving reason kept me going until I made it work.<\/p>\n With WAFH, however, I’m not sure what it is that’s driving me to write it.\u00a0 For now, though, I’ll just press through until I find out.\u00a0 I really hope I’m not just wasting my time writing this (because the rough draft sucks REALLY <\/strong>bad) but past experience has told me to ignore my own self-doubts at this phase.<\/p>\n Which reminds me: this week’s Writing Excuses podcast<\/a> is really amazing.\u00a0 I just listened to it an hour or two ago, and the advice this time around was exactly what I needed to hear.\u00a0 Brandon’s advice in particular is very good: he basically says to stop worrying and enjoy what you’re doing.<\/p>\n So do I enjoy all of this?\u00a0 In spite of all the angst I’ve spilled, I think I can say that I do.\u00a0 When you’ve got a good story, and you know<\/em> that it’s good, and you tell it in a way that moves someone else in a personally meaningful way–man, there’s nothing that compares to that.\u00a0 I look back now on stuff I used to think was absolute drivel, and I’m amazed.\u00a0 It takes persistence and drive and a little bit of crazy, but once you can get to that point, it makes everything you did to get there worth it.<\/p>\n The only thing now is to find out why WAFH is worth writing, and to hang onto those reasons at all costs until the story comes into its own.\u00a0 Wish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So yesterday, I wrote through 4k words in WAFH 2.0 without even realizing it. \u00a0I didn’t feel very productive, because I only did about 500 words at a time before something came up and I got distracted, but by the end of the day, ended up accomplishing a lot. \u00a0That was a pleasant surprise. In… Continue reading Getting back into things<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,44,32],"tags":[78,88,42,83,147,73,156,155,599,232],"class_list":["post-3572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","category-ds","category-ge","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-doubts-and-fears","tag-frustrations","tag-inspiration","tag-momentum","tag-planning","tag-revising","tag-rough-drafts","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-why-we-write","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-VC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3572"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3584,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions\/3584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}