Over the past two days, I’ve written 1040 words in chapter 14 of my novel. (That’s why I haven’t posted any fiction bits here.)
The experience has been interesting, and I think it validates my analysis that led me to make a resolution to write daily.
Too often while writing this novel, I have had days, weeks, even months in which I did not work on it because I didn’t know what to do next. I have the general course of the plot worked out, and I know how it will end. But what will be in the next scene that will advance the plot and be interesting to the reader? That, I get stuck on sometimes.
And rather than sit down and try to write my way through the scene and see what happens, I would take time off from writing until I had some sort of inspiration. Eventually that inspiration would come, and I’d continue. But that’s why this thing is taking so long to write.
And with this latest chapter, I was unsure what the first scene would hold. But last night I just started writing, and inspiration came to me as I wrote. So I finished the first part of the scene. Tonight, I was uncertain about where it was going from there. I started writing, and another inspiration came.
So, that’s progress.
Now, fear:
Until last year, I hadn’t written a complete short story in over a decade. Last year I wrote four. Two of those four are now finalists in major competitions, which is an amazing degree of success even if the stories do not win.
I should be bursting with confidence in my abilities as a writer.
But those two stories are the best I’ve ever written. And I don’t know why.
The analytical part of me wants to know how I did it, so I can do it again. But I don’t know.
Part of me fears they were flukes. After all, the stories are very different from each other in style and tone. The inspiration for writing them came in completely different ways. Maybe I was just lucky.
Another part of me fears that, even if they were not flukes, having had success with these stories I will try too hard to imitate them, and that therefore my writing would become worse because it would no longer be fresh. Ever read something that is trying to sound like great writing? It rarely succeeds, does it?
Well, I guess I need these fears to keep myself humble, so I keep trying new things and striving to improve my writing.