If so, man you are wonderfully patient. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Life has been busy and up and down and everything. I owe a few people blog/journal/post responses and I am SORRY for those as well. :( I r very bad.
Writing news. First, the bad news. I am putting my 2YN novel aside for now. I dun thoughts long and hard about this, but I think it's the right decision for now. There is something wrong with it, but I don't know what and it's driving me to the point where I haven't been able to write anything meaningful in months. Even when I think I have my plot fuck ups ironed out... something still doesn't seem right. Being that this was my first attempt at a novel, this was very much a learning/growing experience. But it's stalled horribly and until I can figure it out I need to put it aside for now. I AM going to come back to it because I still believe very strongly in the story and characters. I'm not sure how a story can speak this strongly to me and still not be working, but such is the case.
Instead of spinning my wheels on it, I'm choosing to try a different route with the next one. To start with, I'm keeping the plot of this one much simpler. I had WAY too many secret agendas and double crosses in the old one. It was a pretty ambitious first piece admittedly. It wasn't meant to be, but apparently I have a hard time telling a simple story. I must complicate matters. :) Fun, but oh the ulcers it brings.
After much book reading, information consumption, thinking and percolating, I have decided to work with of my other ideas. I wanted to make sure I had a better plan for this one (in as much as I plan these things) and there were a few things I specifically wanted to do differently this time around. I think I've done that, finally.
The new story is more organized (though still nothing compared to most outliners I'm sure) and I'm taking pains to make sure I keep everything in a very small number of documents and paper. I'm also trying several new ideas out in regards to plotting, outlining and writing. I will not edit what's already been written. I love doing it, but it is a deep, dark well to fall into. I am going to try very hard to write in order this time. It sort of helps that I don't have a middle or ending planned, (ok lemme clarify, I have the plot idea and the vague way I want things to go, in general overall, but I don't have the ending scenes practically jumping for the page). Basically I don't have random scene ideas coming to me out of the blue yet. I am writing a tiny bit out of sync occasionally (as in three paragraphs down, not 12 chapters), but I get a bit of it, then go back to what I was writing and catch up. How long can I keep that up? we'll see. As long as I can.
I think the whole process took so long for a couple of reasons. 1) I really didn't want to let it go. I really wanted to figure out what was wrong with it and fix it. 2) Once I finally decided that was what I needed to do, I still had to come to terms with it. 3) I was depressed at my perceived failing. 4) I had to decide which story idea I would work with instead and how I was going to do things differently this time.
Having said all that, yesterday night I finally started the actual story writing. Between last night and today I've gotten about 3500 words down. Not a bad start.
I'm going to try very, very hard (without managing to stress myself out about it) to keep the momentum going. Every few scenes, I'm going to stop writing and briefly outline several scenes (broken up into smaller chunks). Then I'll write them out, see where things are headed and do the next chunk of scenes with that in mind, while ALSO keeping in mind the overall story plot and plan. I'm really hoping this works.
I'm also telling myself very firmly that a less than perfect first draft is normal and acceptable. I tell myself this about, oh, 50 times a day at least. For realz yo. I think it's even sinking in!
As much as I hate to give up, like the good man says, sometimes, you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em... I WILL be revisiting it someday.
Failing made me incredibly depressed and it got to the point where I just couldn't read people's posts. It's not that I'm not happy for everyone because I really am. But I kept seeing it as a constant reminder that I was fucking up. Not very helpful.
I'm going to try to get back into posting. I spent pretty much all day writing and when I get the momentum and muse I'm pretty loathe to fuck with it in any way, so I say try and not do for good reason.
Good night all, the "State of the union" the war and peace version is done finally. Sleep well.
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