For when your projects suck.



I'll start: I just spent 8 goddamn hours writing 2000 words for this book only to realise at the end that I'm going to have to cut out at least 75% of it because it's only interesting to me at this point and doesn't advance the story except in the most tangential sense.  And yeah, I know it's still valuable and worth doing even if you cut stuff, but right now I am sulking, not self-encouraging.

goddamnit i just sketched out the family tree and realised two of my married characters are first cousins once removed

For when your projects suck.

I built up some writing momentum in 1996-2000.  Wrote a shortish novel.  (It sucked.  But I had a lot of fun doing it, and I like to imagine that I learned a lot in the process.)

Then my son was born, and all my writing crashed to a halt.

When he finally learned to sleep through the night (age 5 or so), so that I wasn't a completely useless zombie all the time, I started writing again.  Started gaining some momentum in 2005-6.

Then my first daughter was born, and all my writing crashed to a halt again.

I never recovered.

Now I look at my novel, and (in spite of how bad it is) I find myself thinking:  How on earth did I ever manage to do even that?

I have no brainspace for writing.  Life is too overwhelming.  I don't know if I'll ever get back to it.

But I'm here.  So I can dream.  And maybe be a cheerleader for the rest of you. 

[/oversharing]

If you had fun before, I bet you can get that back again, even if it's not now or for quite some time.  I mean, even if your writing is bad and sporadic and short, so long as you're enjoying it, so what?  If you have an idea, a scene that appears without context and leaves you with no desire to write more after it's down, that's still writing, you know?



(I mention this because, for my next bitching contribution, today I wrote another 500 words of the chapter I had planned to finish, then stopped and opened up another file to jot down a quick three paragraph sketch of a scene involving one of my other characters, before I forgot.  And now I have a still unfinished chapter, alongside a chapter's worth of what is basically genderswitched regency romance set in my fantasy world and with a completely different tone to the actual damn book.  And which would screw up the plot besides, because my heroine has much more important concerns than a boyfriend unsure of his place in her life aaaaargh.  No, brain, I do not care how much you yearn to write a trashy romance novel where the extent of the dramatic tension is "oh no, mama wishes me to marry lady mcawfulandrich "; it is fantasy time.  Start cooperating, or the boyfriend gets it via heroically doomed sacrifice.)

In working on my draft of the first part of my novel, written a few years ago, I've found this huge piece of plot that I left lying around while I ran off and did other stuff with my characters.

I'm going to have to figure out how to rescue a couple dozen characters who most incautiously went off on a little adventure several hundred miles from the main setting.

Or, I could just undo that part of the story.

I know which plot direction would be easier.  I know which plot direction would be more interesting.  They are not the same plot direction.

Somewhat relevant to the above.

goddamnit i just sketched out the family tree and realised two of my married characters are first cousins once removed

http://the-toast.net/2015/09/16/a-high-fantasy-novel-without-incestuous-subtext/

"What woman could be fit for a king but a king's sister?" Nuanna said from the Shadow Throne. His green-grey eyes met hers, and they flashed in a sudden, identical light.

"Then, my brother," said Nianna, bowing low, "I shall leave the kingdom immediately and find one, who is related to a different king, to marry you."

"Thank you," Nuanna said.

I came to a screeching halt on my mindromp dinosaur novel because I got absolutely trapped in a detailed imagining of a scene several months in the story's future. Now it feels like 'I'm already here, writing the lead up is going to be really tedious'. However, I was also unable to get much free time to concentrate on writing, so maybe now I can push through that part.