Blog RSS FeedOnward and upward…
Project X is going along swimmingly. It’s just pouring out of me, which is an alien sensation.
Confession time: I’m not what you could call a fast writer. I mean, when I’m writing, it’s fast, but I have a hard time planting myself in the seat and actually doing it. If I hit a wall, I run and hide from it, sometimes for weeks. I see other authors’ blogs where they talk about cheerfully (or torturously) churning out a book in three weeks, six weeks, three months. And I’ve always thought that clearly at some point I swallowed the blue pill instead of the red one.
But here is a different situation, and I’m quite intrigued, and I’m kind of having fun letting myself write compulsively and quickly. One fun thing about this book is that the story doesn’t hinge on the details of the plot–X doesn’t need to lead to Y and then Z, and if you change Y and Z and then X doesn’t fit in, you are at an impasse. This book is more about the characters–who did what to whom and who said what to whom and what they did about it and what happens next and so on.
We’ll see if it’s all worth anything, in the end, but for now I’m going to go with the flow.
It’s sort of a lesson of “don’t put yourself in a box”–maybe I could cheerfully (or torturously) churn out a manuscript in two months (let’s face it: three weeks might be forever out of my range).
I guess we’ll find out!
Last night I dreamed that a pirate ship was coming to attack, and the husb was an officer on the ship that was going to go out and fight them. The captain of the ship and his wife were very elegant and genteel, and when I asked if I could go say good-bye to the husb before they left port, the captain refused, because he had seen the husb’s gigantic bushy beard and figured he was the second assistant cook or something, instead of realizing that he was an officer. I’m sure I didn’t help matters by not being genteel or elegant myself.
This probably ties into the fact that yesterday the husb finally got around to tidying up his facial hair and the bathroom looked like a small furry animal had exploded.
Happy Thursday!
Related posts:February 7th, 2008 Katie Alender
Katie Pooh-
You’re much more advanced and developed for writing than I am, but I do know what it feels like to hit a productive dead-end. Typically, I set that project aside for a while, and come back to it under a different mind set. By then, it’s like picking up where someone else left off, and I can continue the project, make improvements and additions where ever necessary. Sometimes I take it on a completely different road than where I started from. I’m sure your project X will develop swiftly and interestingly.
Shiver me timbers, what a weird dream! Say, does the husband have a gold tooth? Does he feel an inexplicable affinity to parrots? Does he have a pegleg? Your dream my have been more prophetic than weird. Watch for phrases like “Walk the plank” or “There be treasure in them thar hills.” In a psychology class I took a few years ago, men who exhibit these traits want to water ski, so it’s an easy fix (pegleg or not).
I think I?m going to expand in greater detail Scruffy?s fascination with Ed Asner. I?m also including a chapter that covers Scruffy?s weekend coke binge with Courney Love, and his amazing rescue of Katie Holmes (wow, another Katie!) from Tom Cruise (wow, another Tom!) and the Science of Stupidity. I think it?s a good story.
Blessed Lent!
Tom
Thanks, Tom! I do find that walking away works if I have enough time to really walk away. It’s amazing what you see when you’ve had some time to forget what you wrote.
No, the husb as yet hasn’t shown any pirate tendencies… but I told him about the dream and said, “It was so funny, you looked like a mountain man,” and he said, “I am a mountain man,” and left it at that, with no explanation.
3 weeks? How about 3 years! That’s how long a friend and I have been working on our so called book. It’s a mystery involving 2 waitresses (write about what you know!), and our characters each write their own chapters yet they intertwine with each other. Oh so clever! Except since she is so busy with her job (advertising and her own column in the local paper), and I’m busy with my 2 jobs, we spend our spare moments asking each other if wouldn’t be nice to finish this book before our turn in the nursing home!
Thank you for your confession. That is my big problem too: actually getting myself to sit down and DO IT!!!
I loved your dream. Last night I had a dream that I answered an ad on craigslist to be a house cleaner. I hope it doesn’t come to that!
Love your blog, btw!
Three weeks? There are people who turn out books in three weeks? Maybe once you’ve done one, it gets quicker, but it takes me three weeks just to think about procrastinating.
I’m on a roll now, though. I’m FINALLY rewriting my MG/YA novel, and really scrapping stuff that doesn’t work. It’s very painful, but the text is looking better. Kind of like a drastic haircut: it scares you to bits, but you’re pretty sure it’s the right thing to do. And if it’s not, the hair always grows back anyway.
Love that dream. The weird thing is, I was actually going to write a serious blog entry about pirates! ESP!