Well, we did not head down to Georgia this weekend after all; Keith's work was too busy. I'm glad, it's been a busy week for me. Of course, busy for me means two appointments and one grocery shopping trip.
I can tell it's coming on that time of the month; I'm feeling the angst. Fortunately, more about my writing than about procreating, writing being a subject much easier to handle under those emotional conditions.
So I'm gripped by fears of my story completely sucking, and being a huge waste of my time. I keep thinking it has no discipline, no focus, no point, or depth, or sophistication. It's all visceral, off tempo, meandering, self indulgent.
The tempo is strange. It has a nice build through the first half. I know it does. But when they return, it slows and I have to build it up again to the second crisis. It's a little bewildering to a reader to be spun up, have something resolved and then be moving slowly, possibly aimlessly in another direction. I think.
But I think I can solve this by the brilliantly simple statement of "Part 2." Voila. It resets the reader's expectations. They are all, hey, part 2. I wonder what happens in part two? Then they settle down to being wound up again slowly, for the second crisis.
Anyway, I can't deny; it is pure self indulgence. I don't think being visceral is a bad thing. But I do worry that I meander too much. That's a serious concern of mine. But I can't tell, I don't know what I'm going to use in the final story or not. It's like crop spraying, I'm just spreading out words everywhere. Do I need this scene? Maybe. I don't know. I'm beating my way through the jungle without a detailed map.
In the meantime, I have to look up the most annoying, random crap, like hot water heaters, Algebra equations, when did Brad Pitt and Angolina Jolie get married, how long it takes for a bruise to go away and what Georgian architecture really looks like.
It's slow going.
But I have over sixty thousand words, so, as of yesterday, I'm officially working on my first novel length story. It's at one hundred and seventy pages. I've taken to jotting things down in a little notebook, when I think of crap I have to go back and fix, or add, or delete. They come to me at the oddest times; usually when I'm in bed.
Keith is happily amusing himself today, so I'm free to write away.
