Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!

Being a writer is a lot about perseverance.  There are days when I wake up and I stare at my book and I just think that it would be nicer to curl up on my couch and watch last night's Heroes Sarah Connor Chronicles.  Some days it's a battle, but in order to write, to really BE a writer, you can't wuss out.  Sometimes you just have to sit down and write even if you're not feeling it.  

And then sometimes you have to know when something's not working.  It took me about 5 weeks to write about 40k words of the WIP I had going.  It was cool, I liked the idea, but from the outset, it was a bear.  I wrote and re-wrote the first chapter, and every concurrent chapter was excruciating.  I believe in the story, but after 40k words, SOMETHING just didn't feel right.  Then I was struck with an idea.  I'd been mulling over something for days when an angle occurred to me that I hadn't thought of, and the story was suddenly there.  I started writing it, and in 4 days, working for no longer than I normally worked, I wrote nearly 30k words.  I practically wrote a third of the book on a long weekend.  Why?  Because it was the right idea at the right time.  

I did spend a lot of time plotting.  I know how the story is going to end and I generally know how I'm going to get there, but it's still a mad dash to plot the next chapter before I have to write it.  But the writing has been good and fun.  Now that doesn't mean every book is going to be like this, some books are going to be much harder than others, but the other book was hard, I realize, because it was wrong.  

The funny thing is that the current book is thematically, stylistically, and plotwise, much more complicated than the other book.  The problem was that I was writing a book aimed at the 13-18 set when the book was clearly meant to be written for a 9-13 y/o set.  Knowing that, I think when I sit down to start over again, it will flow so nice.  

In other news, I'm geared up for the holidays, and I'm trying desperately to avoid all the doom and gloom news coming out of the publishing world.  Jobs are being cut, restructuring is occurring, and somewhere, in a basement, someone is sacrificing a goat.

Happy Holidays.

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