The Worst Writer: Me, Myself, and Door
Hello dear readers and welcome back to another instalment of my weekly dread, only this time with a little less dread! Hazah!
Last weeks post was a bit of an emotional dump from my side, but it was also quite therapeutic for me to get those words on the page and face a couple of harsh realities. I'd love to say that it allowed me to go into that week a completely new person with uncanny writing abilities and glowing radiant skin, but alas, that was just not in the cards.
No. What I faced instead was two of the biggest obstacles I have come to know dearly. The first being my inner editor (I rebuke you!) the second being a door. Yes you read that right. I'm enemies with myself and a door. Classic me!
My Inner Saboteur
The first is the easiest to explain and most notably the hardest of my enemies to face. To put it simply, my inner editor is me, only a fugly version who's mean. Typically when someone is drafting a novel they're not supposed to let this version of themselves out. The drafting phase is meant for the fun side of them, the creative side that is reckless and spontaneous. The side that gets the draft done. It's only after you've completed a first draft that you're supposed to let the editor out to reel back in the chaos that your creative side built.
So tell me why I'm sitting here working on the first draft of my new novel with my inner editor breathing down my neck? It's paralyzing. Every time I write a paragraph I look back on it and scrutinize it to death until I end up deleting it an hour later. This evil side of me has flared up more times than I can count on this recent project halting my progress each time it does. Even now it's coming after me as I'm writing this blog post (Get back I say! Get back!).
What's the solution to this? That's a little more complicated. I think it's going to take a lot of practice to push that side of myself away. I need to learn to trust my creative side again and be okay to have a messy first draft. In fact it's required to make it to the finish line! I turned to youtube for a solution to this issue and came across a video by VelocityWriting which I think offered some good nuggets of wisdom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BPWLJdREUg). The biggest take away for me being that writing is is akin to mining for gold. Right now I'm in the mining phase and I need to pour all my energy into extracting all the creative ore from my brain, not waste time polishing each stone as I unearth it.
It's all easier said than done, but I've tried some new tricks this week that physically hide each sentence after I write them so I don't get the compulsion to go back and fix them. It's not a perfect solution, and I'm already finding work arounds, but it's proven to be quite helpful to keep pushing forward. Today I even got my writing done in record time!
The Dreaded Door
You knew this part was coming next and it's the part that started my week in a bit of tailspin. THE DREADED DOOR! What do I mean by this? Well I was in a part of my story where the protagonists started the chapter outside of a building, and for the purposes of the plot they then had to be inside of that building. But wouldn't you know it, in order to do so they had to open a god damn door first.
Sound easy to you? Shut up it wasn't! There's something absoltuely nightmarish about re-establishing a scene mid chapter. I've already put in all this work to build out the area, the sights, the sounds, the emotions, and then I have to do it all over again in a single instance as soon as they open a stupid door???? It's like crack for my inner editor and he just comes in and snorts away all my hard earned sentences that I just keep writing again and again.
Seriosuly, I'm not even joking you. And all I was doing was writing my protagonists entering into a hair salon. A HAIR SALON. And yet the task felt like I was climbing Mount Everest. I just couldn't figure out how to describe this place in any way that felt important. I re-wrote the same moment again and again and again until I wanted to scream. I didn't, I promise. But I really really wanted to.
In the end I got around it by skipping the description entirely. That's right, I skipped it, because everybody knows what a hair salon looks like, and it wasn't important to the scene anyways. Instead I opted to describe the things that the protagonist would actually notice right away, like the rather queer looking hair dresser standing at the reception.
So what did I learn from this? Firstly to avoid chapters where my characters change scenes midway through (it just ain't worth it for me), and secondly to stop putting so much pressure on it and reel my inner editor back. The scenes are going to be messy this first time through and if I can spend so much time fixing them in the moment, just imagine how much better I can make them with the full context of the entire book!
Another Week Down Another Week To Go
Woof! I always have a lot more to say than I think I'm going to, but I guess this is cheaper than ~therapy~ so deal with it! If you made it this far down I would give you a little sweet treat, but alas, I cannot do that through a computer.
I'm putting good vibes out there that everyone will have nice writing week, and even if it's not, at least we showed up and tried (that's sort of the whole motto of this). I don't know what's on the menu for tonight, but hopefully it involves some reading, some good tv, and some good food. Oh, and how could I forget, some cat cuddles.
Thanks as always for sticking around!
Ta-ta for now,
M
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