Thursday, October 3, 2013

Where Am I Going with This?

To those of you who don't know already, I am trying to write a novel.  It's fiction, and that's about all I can say about it right now.  Some days, I write in a frenzy.  I can barely type fast enough to keep up with the scenes flowing from my brain.  I get totally submerged in the fictitious world I've created, and feel weird and out of touch with reality when I finally surface hours later.  Today is not one of those days.  Today is one of the days where I sit and stare at the screen, type two sentences, delete one, get up for a cup of coffee, and do some more staring.  Just now I was typing a scene, and it was like making stuff up out of thin air - hard.  I know I'm really always making it up out of thin air, but sometimes it seems like if I sit still and think about the characters, the story practically writes itself.  Today, the story is on vacation, off on a bender, taking a nap.  It refuses to do any of the work itself and insists I pick up the slack.  On days like today, writing is not fun, it is a chore, which is why I'm blogging instead.  It's like when you sit down to study for a test and suddenly decide your whole apartment needs cleaning.  What can I justify doing instead of sitting with Pages open in front of me, plunking out dialogue one painful word at a time, all the while with the sneaking suspicion everything I write today is going to be crap when I reread it later?.......
Well, now I'm doing the same thing with this post: staring at the screen wondering what comes next.  Guess it's time to get back to not writing.