Jet lag kicked my butt this year. I've been flying since I was a baby, but I've never had this bad a time readjusting, even when I came back from India. It took me an entire week to get over the worst of the jet lag and I still felt exhausted this week. Then, I came down with a bad head cold and it alllllll made sense.
I've been in a fog, barely reading, writing in bits in all those extra morning hours. Good bits, but nothing close to my usual wordcount.
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| Look! The view from on the castle walls of Montemor-O-Velho! Don't look at my awful bloggy timeline *distraction* |
Or, maybe, just maybe--jet lag and head cold and coworkers and random exhaustion excluded--I'm coming up with excuses. Because, like jet lag, Summer Story (aka working title Evenfall) is kicking my butt.
Maybe it's a little hard and a little scary. Maybe when I sit down to work on it, there are times when the scene comes so easy that the words just flow off my fingers, but other times I sit and stare and question why I'm putting myself through writing a story that is probably not-so-marketable because, well... I put the query into critique workshop, so you'll see what I mean soon enough.
Maybe it's putting my own life through the wringer as I dive in, research, and put myself in my main character's shoes. Maybe I'm scared that I have a concept that could be amazing if done right, but I'll never be good enough to write it. Bookishly scared me at times. Dramatically, too. But this? A million times more.
What do you do when what you are writing is hard enough that it scares the writing right out of you?
I've run into a similar wall. My NaNoWriMo for this year is a story thats been ruminating almost a year. The planned story is meant to get really emotional and raw, because parts of it are from my own experience. And I knew from the beginning that I have that fear, the "I'll never be good enough to write it." When I was in college doing design presentations, we were told that the more you know about your topic, the better your presentation will be. So, I help ease that fear by more research. But that could be a hiding place. Remember, the first draft will never be good. No one's ever is. But you can't fix what's not on paper, and so that's also helped push me forward. Hope this helped! Good luck, and I hope Bookishly gets picked up, because I cannot wait to read that one!
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I think the closer you are to a story, the more painful it can be. The research has been both my hiding ground and also a giant source of inspiration. I'm now knee-deep in a new favorite podcast because of the story and have learned so much about myself through the research part. Still, the writing- UGH! I don't know how issues writers flay themselves open all the time!
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