Writer's Blocks Are Like Asymetrical Moles, They've Got To Come Off
When you're a crochity old fart at NANOWRIMO like I am, eventually you start to notice things (and if you're the retentivewrimo, as soon as you notice them you have to blog about them). A magical cure for writer's block seems to have happened to me yesterday.
This hint of the ages that I can offer to everyone is this: DELETE WHAT SUCKS AND IS HOLDING YOU BACK!
I know this is counterintuitive since the whole goal of NANOWRIMO is trudging ahead at all costs. But not if what you're leaving behind is doing nothing but adding an albatross around the neck of your novel.
For example, I changed an entire passage from characters walking down the stairs of a building calmly and running into a man with a gun to them ducking smoke and then running into a man with a gun. Sure it seems like a subtle difference but in reality, it's huge. It's created a sense of urgency that up until I rewrote those 2,000 words or so the novel was lacking.
Sure I could have just had the building start collapsing around the people at the point in the story I was at, but I would still have been left with the boring, no drama portion that preceeded it with questions like, "boy that fire spread really suddenly, didn't it?" haunting me the rest of the way.
The scary thing is that I've gotten so into this scene that it's already run to five pages and it's just getting started. Talk about pacing problems. The characters have all been going through things pretty quickly and now as they have to jump out a window it slows down to the speed I should have been writing at all along.
One thing I obviously haven't learned yet is that I can't merely outline some chapters and in others go so in depth they take up half the novel.
Guess crochity old me still has a lot to learn in his fourth year.
---
Another odd post-modern thing happened in my story today (like the plane incident). While my characters in the story are battling with a window, apparently my landlord decided to have new windows intalled in my apartment today. It's too bad because they actually had to break through an old storm window in the novel and now I've got brand new ones that are much different to describe.
One thing I think that's not going to sneak into my novel is that I'm going under the knife on Thursday.
It's nothing serious, hopefully.
I went to the dermitologist today to get a mole at my chest which seems to have grown over a chicken pox scar looked at. Well, that mole is absolutely harmless it turns out and I was, of course, lectured by the skin doc as though I was wasting her time.
Luckily or unluckily, it turns out there's a mole on my back by the shoulder blade that's apparently become assymetrical and needs to come off before it possibly turns into melanoma.
Since I waited six weeks for the original dermitologist appointment, it's pretty obvious that the mole surgeon isn't someone to be asked, "is there a better day for that?"
So the good news is that now I have Thursday afternoon to write. The bad news is that after the half hour procedure, I'll have a bunch of stitches in my back and maybe even be on painkillers (though apparently this excise and biopsy is relatively painless).
As if I needed just one more thing to distract me from writing.
At least since my laptop is still broken, I'm forced to type sitting up anyhow so thank goodness for small blessings.
Then again, with how much better my word rate has gotten since I switched from laptop to desktop, maybe it's an extremely large blessing.
---
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 20,089 words
This hint of the ages that I can offer to everyone is this: DELETE WHAT SUCKS AND IS HOLDING YOU BACK!
I know this is counterintuitive since the whole goal of NANOWRIMO is trudging ahead at all costs. But not if what you're leaving behind is doing nothing but adding an albatross around the neck of your novel.
For example, I changed an entire passage from characters walking down the stairs of a building calmly and running into a man with a gun to them ducking smoke and then running into a man with a gun. Sure it seems like a subtle difference but in reality, it's huge. It's created a sense of urgency that up until I rewrote those 2,000 words or so the novel was lacking.
Sure I could have just had the building start collapsing around the people at the point in the story I was at, but I would still have been left with the boring, no drama portion that preceeded it with questions like, "boy that fire spread really suddenly, didn't it?" haunting me the rest of the way.
The scary thing is that I've gotten so into this scene that it's already run to five pages and it's just getting started. Talk about pacing problems. The characters have all been going through things pretty quickly and now as they have to jump out a window it slows down to the speed I should have been writing at all along.
One thing I obviously haven't learned yet is that I can't merely outline some chapters and in others go so in depth they take up half the novel.
Guess crochity old me still has a lot to learn in his fourth year.
---
Another odd post-modern thing happened in my story today (like the plane incident). While my characters in the story are battling with a window, apparently my landlord decided to have new windows intalled in my apartment today. It's too bad because they actually had to break through an old storm window in the novel and now I've got brand new ones that are much different to describe.
One thing I think that's not going to sneak into my novel is that I'm going under the knife on Thursday.
It's nothing serious, hopefully.
I went to the dermitologist today to get a mole at my chest which seems to have grown over a chicken pox scar looked at. Well, that mole is absolutely harmless it turns out and I was, of course, lectured by the skin doc as though I was wasting her time.
Luckily or unluckily, it turns out there's a mole on my back by the shoulder blade that's apparently become assymetrical and needs to come off before it possibly turns into melanoma.
Since I waited six weeks for the original dermitologist appointment, it's pretty obvious that the mole surgeon isn't someone to be asked, "is there a better day for that?"
So the good news is that now I have Thursday afternoon to write. The bad news is that after the half hour procedure, I'll have a bunch of stitches in my back and maybe even be on painkillers (though apparently this excise and biopsy is relatively painless).
As if I needed just one more thing to distract me from writing.
At least since my laptop is still broken, I'm forced to type sitting up anyhow so thank goodness for small blessings.
Then again, with how much better my word rate has gotten since I switched from laptop to desktop, maybe it's an extremely large blessing.
---
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 20,089 words
posted by incendiarymind at 7:17 PM
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