It’s not great. But it’s done.
I wrote chapter four of my novel today. It’s only about ten pages long, and those ten pages were hard fought. I have to step away from it for a little while, and revisit it with a mind to revise/rewrite the whole thing. This was the first time that I’d had a significant struggle with the storytelling, but as I plugged away, I did find a path forward.
I hadn’t written anything all week, and it might be that I was avoiding something that I knew would be difficult (though I did have a lot of my day job stuff going on this week.) I began the day writing at home while Bromleigh enjoyed the magic of Chuck E. Cheese’s with my daughter, but my other daughter was home and noisy, so I couldn’t concentrate that much.
When I got stuck, I turned to my foolproof method of finding inspiration: taking a shower. I had been putting it off until I ran out of ideas. The shower worked, in a way. I had lots of ideas. But they were all about how I could make a sequel to the book I’m writing. Maybe you should finish writing this book first, tough guy.
I did, at least, type those sequel ideas out. You never know.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a way forward, so I started reading another required reading list book: Bad Apple, by faculty member Laura Ruby. I got a couple of chapters into it, and then Bromleigh came home. We decided an outing to the library was in order. With coffees in hand, we both began writing.
I was interrupted a few times by students stopping by to say hello. That was fine, but got me out of writing mode, even if for a few moments at a time. Finally, I just plugged away at it. Word by word. Sentence by sentence. By the end, it was flowing much better, up until the end of the chapter, which probably happens far too abruptly. I’ll deal with that later.
What’s nice about being part of a community of writers is that I know that I’m not alone. Some writing days are better than others. I started the day by reading this excellent post about pre-writing, by Anna Palmquist. In her post’s disclaimer, she talks about how some people think that writing systems are instruments of THE MAN, which made me laugh, because I have a whole discussion about THE MAN in my novel. It also reminded me that I liked that thing that I am writing, and it pushed me to return to it.
But, just because I like it, doesn’t mean it’s easy. But again, I’m not alone:
5 pages and an exercise completed today, but wow are they bad, bad, bad pages. #shittyfirstdraft #amwriting
— Swati Avasthi (@SwatiAvasthi) February 13, 2014
And she’s a well-regarded, published author (and great teacher.) So, I can do this. I did do this! I’m happy about the fact that I punched out ten pages. Ten agonizing pages. But, you can’t revise nothing. You can revise ten shitty pages.
Bromleigh says she likes the chapter. But she always says that.
At least you have ten shitty pages. I have almost nine shitty pages… after weeks of reading and agonizing. Not fretting about that deadline on Monday. Nope, not me.
You can do it! I know you can! Because for the first time in forever…
You guys can definitely do it! And sometimes, pushing through the stupid hard days makes you feel more accomplished than those days where things just fly along.
But also, eff that. I’d rather feel less accomplished and have more easy writing days. 😉
Hey Josh! Thanks for the mention. I really admire the hard work you put into your writing while also working full time and having children. Keep going, a little at a time! At least, that’s what I keep telling myself!