First off, I’d like to thank Katherine Gilraine for being brave enough to take up my offer of hosting her guest post. There was good response from everyone involved, and I clocked in over a hundred views yesterday. Yes, that might not sound like a lot, but to me it’s impressive, because I’m just a small blog, and a small person, and I’m still growing and getting known. So thanks to everyone who showed up to say “Hi!” and made it a very busy day.
Now, back to the mundane of what passes for life at The Undisclosed Location.
I know there are people who like to give me props about my dedication to this craft, how I’ve created his routine for gettin’ it done, so to speak. I have to say, I amaze myself at times that I’m able to keep up this routine as I do. I mean, look at now: I was up at 4 AM, turned on the computer at 4:28, and here it is, 4:54, and I’m already 175 words into my blog post.
But lately . . . I’ve had a lot of distractions.
I’ve written before about having way too many shiny distractions, things that keep pulling you away from the task at hand and seeming to push you off the path. This week it seems like they’ve been everywhere. All during this week’s run at editing Couples Dance, and it seems like I’ve wanted to run off and do something, anything, other than work on that story.
There is one word I should change, however, and that’s “edit”. This week I haven’t been editing, I’ve been writing. I decided I wanted to “stretch out” the story, which was sitting at thirty six thousand words, and kick it into novel territory. Aye, that I have done, but it’s not leaving me with a good feeling . . .
Don’t get me wrong; the chapters cover things that should have been covered the first time around. In fact, I think Chapter 7.5 (as I am calling it right now) is pretty kick ass, if not a little sick. But chapter 8.5, which is a discussion of ideas about things that happened in the story, and a tossing of ideas between characters . . . damn, man, but getting that chapter together has been like pulling teeth with a couple of toothpicks.
As I pointed out to some people last night, this last chapter is almost 6,400 words long. That, right there, is a short story in of itself. In fact, after going over the numbers last night, I determined that, as of this moment, I’ve added 15,000 words to Couples Dance.
That’s a hell of a lot of wordage however you cut it.
I don’t know what has caused me to stray during this last week. Maybe it’s because this particular chapter just wasn’t “coming to me” like so many have in the past. Maybe it’s because I have not one, not two, but three ideas for stories rolling about in my head at the moment, and it’s starting to feel like a Marx Brother’s movie in there. It could also be that I’m straight up exhausted, and when I’m doing my night writing (hey, that could be the name of a band!) I simply don’t have the energy to crank out the words like when I was creating the story the first time around.
Or maybe . . . there’s this feeling I’m getting like the chapter I just finished doesn’t sit “right”. Like I know it’s filler, and it feels like filler, and it’s pissing me off because I know it’s not right.
Sure, I know it’s a first draft. I even said that last night as I saved it off: ”I’ll pretty it up in the edit,” is what I said as I saved the document and got ready to copy it to my external drive, and I know I’ll have to do just that. There is this feeling . . . like I said, it doesn’t feel right. I’ll fix it up later.
No, really, I will.
Does this mean I’m discouraged? Somewhat. I don’t want these to have these feelings that what I’m doing sucks, and what I’m producing isn’t worth a damn. Or that it’s going to be rejected as crap. Or, worst of all, it doesn’t live up to my exceptions of what I should write.
It’s enough to get your down.
And then something comes along that keeps you going . . .
Two days ago I get this Facebook IM. It’s from the publisher who is putting out my erotica story next month–which, I realize, is only a few days away. She had something for me to see, so I clicked on the link–
And there was the cover for my story. All professionally done and looking slick as hell. The only thing that kept me from jumping up and screaming, “Yes!” was that I was at work when I got this IM, and I would have scared everyone in the office.
My first professional cover, staring right back at me, and I know in a few weeks this sucker’s gonna be sitting on the ‘Net with people looking at it.
It’s that kind of filler that keeps you going.
It’s that kind of filler that keeps one writing.
