It’s getting really, really hard for me not to believe that statement, especially as I finish up with the middle part of this novel.\u00a0 I’m starting to realize that I made a whole bunch of mistakes pages and pages ago, and that the climaxes just aren’t working without everything set up right.<\/p>\n
I know, cognitively, that it’s mostly just psychological and that this book probably isn’t as bad as I think it is, but I’m finding it hard to convince myself of that.\u00a0 I got to the climax of part II yesterday, and it was…not what I’d had in my head.\u00a0 That’s probably what’s frustrating me the most.\u00a0 If I can’t write down the story as I have it in my head, what does that mean?\u00a0 It either means I’m a terrible writer, or that I didn’t get the setup right (or both…gah!).<\/p>\n
So…where do I go from here?\u00a0 Throwing out the entire story isn’t an option–I’m not going to allow myself to do that.\u00a0 I could, however, put it on the back burner for a while, let it simmer…or I could do or die and finish the 1.0 draft, no matter how crappy it turns out.\u00a0 I suppose that would accomplish something for my self esteem, but is that the way to best serve the story?<\/p>\n
Fortunately, this past week we talked about revision in English 318.\u00a0 Listening to my recording of the class gave me a few ideas.\u00a0 I could make a list of known problems, with their fixes, and continue as if I’d already made them.\u00a0 I think I did that a few times with The Phoenix of Nova Terra,<\/em> but I don’t know how I feel about that now.\u00a0 I could probably make it work…<\/p>\n The main issue is that I feel very, very distant from this book.\u00a0 A month ago, I was immersed in the thing, writing over a thousand words each day, just chugging it out.\u00a0 Now, for various reasons, other things have come up and drawn away my attention, so I don’t feel that I’m really in this world anymore.\u00a0 I feel like I’m more of an outsider, writing for the sake of writing rather than trying to tell this story the way it wants to be told.\u00a0 I can’t really remember what I wrote a hundred pages ago, despite that big sheet of butcher paper up in my closet.<\/p>\n Another thing that complicates all of this is that I’m really, really<\/em> excited about the other novel, Genesis Earth.<\/em> I’ve gotten back comments from most of my alpha readers, and I’m all but chomping at the bit to start working on it again.\u00a0 If I had nothing else going on, no pressing obligations or assignments, with the enthusiasm I have for this project I could probably finish the second draft in a week, and the third draft the week after that.<\/p>\n So…what’s next?<\/p>\n Well, I think I’m going to start the revision on Genesis Earth<\/em> today or tomorrow.\u00a0 When I was this enthused about revising Pheonix<\/em>, I decided to wait and finish Genesis Earth<\/em> instead, and the enthusiasm for that project died down surprisingly fast.\u00a0 Better to start now than wait until I’ve got the free time but struggle with motivation.<\/p>\n In the meantime, I’m going to finish the current chapter of Bringing Estella Home<\/em> and let it rest for a bit.\u00a0 I’ll probably reread what I’ve got from the beginning, make a few revision notes, perhaps an outline of sorts–try to figure out what’s wrong, what I need to change to make it work.\u00a0 I’ll restrain myself from actually making those revisions (though I did that, mid-draft, for Genesis Earth<\/em>, and it turned out alright…sort of), but once I feel I’m sufficiently “into” the story again, I’ll get back to work and finish the 1.0 draft.\u00a0 Hopefully, I’ll be able to do all that before the end of May.<\/p>\n The trouble here is that I’ll probably end up writing the first draft of this novel and revising the other one at the same time…something I tried last September and failed miserably.\u00a0 However, by the time all of this is finished, inshallah school will be over and I won’t have to worry about it.\u00a0 Things are looking really good for me to get an internship in NYC, which makes me think I should drop my Spring classes and just take it easy for a month before I start (as for housing, that’s a whole other conundrum…).<\/p>\n Gah!\u00a0 Writing is complicated.\u00a0 Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life?\u00a0 Something I can do?\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 I really don’t know.\u00a0 I just have to keep on writing through this depressing pessimism and trust that it will pass.<\/p>\n As a side note, I took the title of this post from a Writing Excuses episode some time ago; here is the link to that episode<\/a>, in case you want to hear it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s getting really, really hard for me not to believe that statement, especially as I finish up with the middle part of this novel.\u00a0 I’m starting to realize that I made a whole bunch of mistakes pages and pages ago, and that the climaxes just aren’t working without everything set up right. I know, cognitively,… Continue reading This sucks and I’m a horrible writer<\/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":[68,32],"tags":[78,108,88,94,42,46,30,73,156,119,4,599],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","category-ge","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-climax","tag-doubts-and-fears","tag-english-318","tag-frustrations","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-life-decisions","tag-planning","tag-revising","tag-summer-2009","tag-the-lost-colony","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-7R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","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=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}