The Horror of Writing
As some of you may know, I'm deep into the writing of my second novel. My first (read the first chapter here), a horror story set in London's underground railway system, came easily enough (though sitting down to write a whole novel was a big mountain to climb), but the 2nd one (a bicycle-based romance) has been very tough.
First of all, I expected it to flow out in linear stylee but no, it refused, and instead lept about like a freshly born lamb hell bent on discovering every square metre of it's field in the Chilterns. I even wrote the end before much of the middle! At first this freaked me out a little/quite a lot, I was wondering what I was doing wrong, but fortunately a quick whizz around a few other author sites showed me that this isn't exceptional at all. Which was a relief!
So, back to today and the many hours it's taken me to write 500 words. I think I've been labouring under the delusion that when I write it must just flow out. Apparently not though. In fact, in this case (where the two main characters are having critical conversation the outcome of which will either make or break their relationship) it has to be very carefully worded, each sentence picked through very carefully as if I were a one-person forensic team sorting through a crime scene. And that takes time, often several minutes for one poxy little ten word sentence. Have you any idea how maddening that is?
I wasn't expecting that. And it is very, very frustrating. So, although I've written a pathetically small amount of words today, I have learnt a valuable lesson, i.e. some things demand more attention and will only appear if you take your foot off the accelerator.
Comments!
So, what sort of things have tripped you up when writing? How do you deal with frustration and dealing with the unexpected? Let me know and let's see if we can share what we've learnt and hopefully save others going through the same pain.
Cheers!
As some of you may know, I'm deep into the writing of my second novel. My first (read the first chapter here), a horror story set in London's underground railway system, came easily enough (though sitting down to write a whole novel was a big mountain to climb), but the 2nd one (a bicycle-based romance) has been very tough.
First of all, I expected it to flow out in linear stylee but no, it refused, and instead lept about like a freshly born lamb hell bent on discovering every square metre of it's field in the Chilterns. I even wrote the end before much of the middle! At first this freaked me out a little/quite a lot, I was wondering what I was doing wrong, but fortunately a quick whizz around a few other author sites showed me that this isn't exceptional at all. Which was a relief!
So, back to today and the many hours it's taken me to write 500 words. I think I've been labouring under the delusion that when I write it must just flow out. Apparently not though. In fact, in this case (where the two main characters are having critical conversation the outcome of which will either make or break their relationship) it has to be very carefully worded, each sentence picked through very carefully as if I were a one-person forensic team sorting through a crime scene. And that takes time, often several minutes for one poxy little ten word sentence. Have you any idea how maddening that is?
I wasn't expecting that. And it is very, very frustrating. So, although I've written a pathetically small amount of words today, I have learnt a valuable lesson, i.e. some things demand more attention and will only appear if you take your foot off the accelerator.
Comments!
So, what sort of things have tripped you up when writing? How do you deal with frustration and dealing with the unexpected? Let me know and let's see if we can share what we've learnt and hopefully save others going through the same pain.
Cheers!
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