there should be a word for it
difficult day, but I suppose if you just prod forward,
you reach the point where you cycle back around to more inspiration.
still sometimes I get the feeling that I am just putting the story into words and it makes me unhappy, I enjoy reading novels with poetry in them, really lovely descriptions and
elaborate life philosophies, strange childhood memories.
this is not giving me the time, and the story is a little bit emaciated,
I keep telling myself that the editing process will allow for fattening up,
but I’d like to have time to craft the story more.
day 14:::: 23,538 words.
and
why is it the only thing I can think of is getting home and putting on my new waxy lilac shoes?
posted by natalie @ 2:11 AM
3 Comments:
I understand how you're feeling, Natalie. Of course, we would all like to be able to write something that is beautiful AND finished in a reasonable amount of time. Having started and abandoned several novels that I felt had the ring of quality, I can say from experience that perfection can debilitate. I've spent weeks looking for le mot juste, and often I've found it. But le mot juste didn't lead to a finished story. It just led to a beautiful sentence. There's nothing wrong with a beautiful sentence, but I think that the point of this quick slapdash effort is to have a working model. Not a finished - as in sanded, stained, and lacquered - product. What I want at the end of the month is something that I can go back and perfect, if possible. If you have ideas for turns of phrase, jot them down, or go back and add them. But nit-picking over one line can be a way of avoiding the hard task of finishing the whole story. Don't make Jack and I come over there and put a whoopin' on you.
i know that getting it done is important and i know that making it ornate like french quarter ironwork can be done later, but the things that make me love novels are often the asides, the no sequitur that are like little poems, the beautiful things, they are brief, reading a whol novel's worth would be exhausting, but they give the richness that makes literature not reporting,
i have no issue pushing forward, i have alrady employed the ______ technique for when les mots justes that are not readily available, just to progress,
but i don't feel the tenderness i want to feel toward my story,
hey, maybe that is a good thing. not so close, not too careful with it, get more done...?
Thanks for your wise words...
Yes! Exactly! I don't have so much love invested in this story that I can't just screw it up to get to the end. I have absolutely nothing invested in this story. I didn't even have a plot when I sat down, aside from the most rudimentary. So when I got stuck earlier in the week, I could say, "I'm stuck. Now what? Well, something's got to happen. So? I guess somebody kidnaps my heroine. We'll see what happens then." It wasn't much of a kidnapping, but it led to other things happening. I hadn't expected the other things, but that was what was great. It didn't matter to me that maybe events were not happening as I would plan them. I was just thrilled that any event at all was happening. Today, though, to slow myself down in this new hurtling pace of action and adventure, I took time to describe the sunset over the roofs of the small town, the glow of the sign in the restaurant, the train tracks that ran parallel to Main street. They weren't necessary, but now that I have some action to push me forward I can slow down to enjoy the scenery. Because if I have more than 50,000 words by March 31st, hip hip hooray!
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