Just caught this as I recover from a rather bad bout of pneumonia and it cheered me up according to the principle that misery loves company. I'm trying to get back into the new novel after a 4 week break feels like a Herculean task.
If it was easy, everyone would do it. And it would probably be less fun: working out challenges is part of the joy to me (even if it can be frustrating sometimes)
I *love* finding the story. 20,000 words in is the challenge for me. That's when all the other books I want to write decide it's their turn, and I must write them instead. I have the first 20,000 words of far too many books because I was lured by the #ShinyNewStory and never returned to finish them.
Butting in, but the lure of the other story, a third into a first draft, is why I take ten years to write a novel. I tell myself that this time it will be different, but it never is.
I've got all the words this time. Too many words. It's just finding the PLOT in it all...I thought i had the plot but realised that's NOT the plot so having to pull out the real one from the mess!
I feel this. I wrote the full 50k of book two, then discovered it wasn't the book two I wanted to write. So I started again. Then again. On my third attempt and I'm back up to 30k and it feels more like the book it should be. But I'll have written 120k of a 50k book by the time I'm done!
So often the way. I've wanted to write a sci-fi book for years. I started one with time travel, fell in love with the bit about the Arts and Crafts era and it turned into a historical novel with all my time travel planning unnecessary/hacked out. Stories are tricksy things - they choose you, I think
I then make sure each chapter reflects core & somehow, it helps things nestle into place. I loathe the Mythic Structure & think it's ableist & capitalist & all the bad thing. We need new structures. I like fractal structure (have yet to test it on readers - but just finished a fractal book so 🤞)
YUP. When I have a breakthrough it's great, woo, amazing. Then I have to make another damn breathrough and I'm on the wrong side of a brick wall again...
Maybe you could let Loki write the story for you when you get walled up (though I suspect he's not a great fan of structure and it might lead to chaos. But that's not necessarily a bad thing...)
I stopped at one creative writing course. My tutor told me that with my writing I would easily find my way in paid print. She was a self published author of one (1) book. I thought preferable to stop straight away. Books ARE hard.
Comments
*glares at next 20k to be written*
If it’s hard… you must be doing good.