So the other day I was quite behind on my word count and I was rather plot-less and my writing was not good and I had to pull out some of the dreaded dares to get the word count up again (let me tell you, throwing a TARDIS and a Doctor and a companion into a scene will up your word count like nobody’s business) and it just became so very silly that I wanted to throw my hands in the air and shout “WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?” I was beginning to doubt my ability to write anything at all. Ever. Throw on top of that the fact that at about 40,000 words I had a sudden idea for a whole different novel and it sounded so much cooler than either of the things I’m working on now (mostly because it’s new and shiny, I know, but still) and that I keep getting stuck in the technicalities of the plot in my long-term novel and just can’t seem to iron them out. The result being that I had a bit of a self-inflicted mental block of self-doubt. I was determined to push through anyway because I have heard many, many times that this is quite normal for any writer to feel at any given moment, particularly while writing the first draft. So I did. I pushed through the crap that was chapters 15 and 16 (and, who am I kidding, most of the chapters before that and part of chapter 17) And you know what?
I actually wrote some things I’m proud of. In the first draft. Of my extremely silly novel. Immediately after the chapter where the Doctor comes in and rescues them from jail for no other reason than to up the word count. Which is right after they meet a mayor who insists on balancing random objects on his head for NO REASON. And right after I named a diamond the Spork. This sequence I’m writing now is turning out SO MUCH BETTER than I had hoped. They’re all doing important things, a plot is coming together more or less on its own, I think I’m setting up for a plot twist that I have planned coming up. It’s actually going well. And you know what else? I think I might actually manage to finish the novel at around 50K, which was what I was planning to do this time around.
All this to say that yes, it’s true: if you can persevere through the self-proclaimed crap in your writing, you can make it through to something you’re proud of.
Keep on writing, wrimos!
45,385/50,000
