Well, I’m not too surprised.
After the week before last’s mammoth progress, this last week wasn’t as great.
It happens sometimes. Maybe I’m spending the creativity too fast, maybe I’m running ahead of the ‘percolation time’ required by the writing brain before actual written sceneage will be allowed onto the page. Feels like I’m writing through sludge, and writing something that closely resembles sludge, too.
At this point, someone usually says, “ah, but you can’t edit a blank page,” meaning to say I should just keep writing and trust to the editing process.
Uh-huh.
There is only so much you can achieve with the editing process. I always come back to the same thought – polishing crap only results in shiny crap. And a stink.
But I AM still writing. About a thousand words shy of the weekly target last week, but that’s okay. I’m starting to think now about tricks to play with to unpick the story more. Is it time for the scary spaghetti diagrams on used flipchart paper? Coloured post its? Index cards and GMC charts?
Big cross-tabulations and getting the cats to run through ink pads onto the paper???
I’m very aware I have *counts on fingers* at least five story threads in this book, one of them set in the past. At least one (probably two) of those are begging to be written all at once, rather than in bits and pieces dotted through the story as a whole. With one of the antagonists’ thread, that might be quite good to do. With the set-in-the-past one it could be disastrous.
Hmmmm.
When you write out of sequence, as I do, there’s usually a queue at the back of your head of scenes to be written. They’re all waving and going, “pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”
It’s a bit disconcerting when those scenes are all trying to shuffle behind one another like a bunch of kids asked to volunteer for kitty litter duty.
The time for extra coffee, in a bid to kick start the scene enthusiasm, has passed.
Maybe I need a swim…
