Taking a Step Back

You know you haven't bothered to update - or even look - at your blog in a long time when you can't even remember the name of the damn thing when you go to log in.  Oy, vey.

So yeah.  Nine months.  It's not the worst hiatus ever taken, but it still feels like a long time.  Unfortunately, I don't have much to report on from the writing front as far as progress goes.  In fact, I feel like I've regressed.  My goal for 2013 was to finish the first draft of my current project, The Good Doctor, by the end of the year, but as December went on I realized that that just wasn't going to happen as the plot started to unravel around me.  At that time, I thought the only thing I could do to salvage the story was to start from the beginning, but the more I tried to plot out its new course the more I realized I really didn't have a plot at all.  To make matters worse, I also started to realize that although I had ideas aplenty for other stories to work on while I worked through a writer's block for another, I couldn't conjure the will and motivation I needed to actually really work on anything.  For the first time in years, I was not actively writing anything at all.  From there, everything just started going downhill.

It didn't help that work became insane around this time, and combine that with being short-staffed because someone was on medical leave, it was a downright nightmare for a good eight to nine weeks.  I had to put in a ton of overtime just to keep up with the incoming workload, which meant a lot of weekend hours on top of that, so the creative process was taken down to almost nothing as I had the energy to do little more than come home, eat dinner, mindlessly surf the Internet for a few hours, then go to bed.

Oh, and if you want to add getting pregnant to the list of "Things That Occupy My Time," I guess you can do that too.

Needless to say, there was a lot of high emotions and crying going on during that time.  A lot of crying.  And not having the outlet that writing usually gave me just made it so much worse.

Things are starting to get a little better.  I was finally able to dig myself out of the mountains of files I had piling on my desk, so I'm not as stressed as I have been, which means I can return my focus to more important matters once I clock out (on time) at the end of day.  I'm still not where I'd like to be with writing since I still feel like I've been more or less creatively crippled by having too many ideas and no plots to put them to, which is almost worse than writer's block.  For the time being, I decided to dust off Deus Ex Machina and get it nice and polished up so I can look into getting it an agent again, or, if that doesn't work, to publish it myself.  It just feels ridiculous to have a finished manuscript lying around, plus knowing exactly what's going to take place in the next two installments, and do nothing with it.  At the same time I'm trying my hand at a fantasy romance/erotica I'll be putting out under another penname, though I'm still debating on whether I want to see it through or not.  The worst part is that out of all the half-formed ideas I have in my head, this one's the most developed.  Dammit.

So that's pretty much the recap of the last few months: lots of work, lots of stress, not enough writing.  And again, the pregnancy thing (which probably warrants a post of its own, since growing a human being is a big deal for most people).  I hope that stepping back will help, but right now I'm ready to take everything back down to ground zero if it means it will help.  I hate not writing - it makes me feel incomplete.

Universal Truths

A writer's block that occurs because you can't find the next words to use is by far more infuriating than a writer's block spawned from being stuck on bridging a scene or figuring out what's supposed to happen next in the plot.

Currently Working on: Surface

Listening to: "Bless the Child" by Nightwish

Reading: Cinder by Marissa Meyer and Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Watching: Saw V

Drinking: Blue Moon Agave Nectar Ale

The Woes of the First Draft

There are times when I truly forget how to first draft.

Writing the first draft of a novel is equal parts the most exhilarating part of writing and the most frustrating.  To me, there's nothing more thrilling than diving into a new story concept, regardless of how many I have going before it, to explore new themes, characters, and plots that my brain can conjure at any time from any source of inspiration.  First drafting comes in two different forms for me, and at both the best and worst of times the methods in which they manifest seems counterintuitive and, more often than not, counterproductive.

Give me a fledgling theme with a half-hashed plot and a couple of rudimentary characters who might not even have names yet?  I'll dive head-first into that puppy and have the first chapter churned out in a mere couple of weeks.

Give me a theme with a beginning, middle, and end-game to the plot with a cast of reasonably fleshed-out characters?  I totally freeze up.  There are times when I think pulling teeth out of my own jaw would be easier than coming up with the next sequential sentence.  I will sometimes struggle for days, maybe even weeks, thinking of the perfect wording for what needs to be said next even though I know *exactly* what's going to happen, only to start the cycle all over again as soon as the ink dries.

Like I said, counterintuitive and counterproductive.  Logically, wouldn't make sense that it would be the other way around?  That I should be able to jump gung-ho into the story that's much more well-developed since it's essentially all there, a convenient road already paved and sparkling before me, while taking the time to feel out the lesser ideas and let them grow in stages until they're ready to stand on their own?

Apparently not.

It's not a huge mystery to why this is.  Instead of first drafting like I should - just write down everything and anything comes to mind, then go back and do some major pruning during the first major edit - I get way too hung up on making it sound as well-thought out as the overall thought does in my head, which completely defeats the purpose of the writing process.  The most frustrating part about the whole thing is that I can feel the ocean of words behind the dam I build up in my own mind, waiting for that first perfect sentence to be constructed that will open the floodgates and really allow me to get crackin'.  Ironically enough, that magical moment almost never comes to me when I'm trying to think of it when I have my notebook and pen in hand, but usually when I'm right smack in the middle of something else and don't have anything to write with, such as when I'm at work, in the car, or - my personal favorite - when I'm getting ready to fall asleep.

I really wonder how many writer's blocks I'd break through sooner and how grief I'd save myself from if I actually sacrificed those ten minutes of sleep to drag my sorry ass out of bed to write even that one sentence down.  Sleep can come later; moments of inspiration are much more fleeting and don't keep to a regular schedule.