Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The Inadvertent Vacation

121/205 I think.  It's been awhile.

You may notice that number hasn't changed much.  Allow me to explain.

Earlier this month I was moving along, as this blog indicates, editing my way through the 200 plus pages of my manuscript.  Normally I simply  go through, scene by scene, fixing each one in chronological order. While working on this current section, I began to realize that the sequence of scenes wasn't quite making sense.  The emotional development and thought lives of the characters did not seem to have a smooth flow.  It was like a carrot chopped and mixed up, so that it was no longer a smooth flow from skinny end to fat end, but instead a bumpy mess of different sizes.

So I thought about rearranging the scenes.  Maybe, with some rewriting to make the transitions make sense, many of the same scenes could be more effective if put in a different order.  Maybe this was the right thing to do.  I wasn't sure.  I didn't know what to do.

And then, life interrupted.  The "inadvertent" title of this blog may indicate to some that I valiantly tried to keep working when the life got busy, or that maybe all the busyness caught me by surprise and so my plans were foiled.  Neither, really.

My inlaws came to visit, their first time since the weekend we moved into this place (last minute "bucket list" of move-in tasks, anyone?).  Technically it was two visits with them staying overnight, as they came to see us before and after spending time in nearby Newport, RI.  I had an interview for a job, then got the second interview, where I was offered and accepted the position.  Between those two interviews, and during one of the inlaw visits, I volunteered with my new church, doing my first turn as a clown in months.  So yes, I was busy.

But here was a cool thing pertaining to my writing:  I was separated from my scene switch dilemma.  Even if I were to think about it, I wasn't going to try to effect any changes any time soon.  In a "normal" span of time, I may have put more pressure on myself to decide sooner.  After all, I want to keep moving, keep progressing that page count.  Got to have something to show the blog readers, right?  But I didn't work on the page count.  I think the dilemma came to mind at least once, but again, I had already come to terms with the fact that any editing was on hold anyway.

It would be nice to tell you that after all these things I came back with my problem easily solved and my workflow moving at a nice pace.  Not all true.  I still procrastinated.  I worried that I had lost readership from not updating the blog in so long.  But, saying prayers for help and guidance, I did get back to work.  I rearranged those scenes, and I  think the sequence will come out well.

So maybe those "writing vacations" aren't so bad after all.  Those times when life gets busy, we can put our work aside when it's driving us crazy anyway.  Get some distance from the rough stuff.  And feel better about ourselves when the vacation does not win out and become permanent, but ends as we pick up our work again and take another step forward.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Encouragement

As I've mentioned before, I'm a new homeowner.  A little while back, while going through yet another box, I came across something interesting.  Years ago, I used to print out exerpts of my manusript for my mother to read. I have two of them on my desk, which she returned with notes.  One of them, which she dated May 2007, has this note in the margins, written in green highlighter:
"Darlin This is Your Gift - I hope someday you will be able to slow down enough to finish it."

Encouragement is such an important thing.  For a something designed for an audience (in this case of readers), writing can be a very lonely pursuit.  And it's hard to put so much time an energy into something that you hope to make money doing but aren't sure if you will.  So when we get down on ourselves, when we start listing all the other things we could be doing that are supposedly "more productive," its good to have someone at our elbow, or a note on a page to say "This is your thing, keep going."  Hey, I mean really, even an occasional "I've read worse" might be all we need sometimes.

So if you're writing, keep writing.  If you know someone who is a writer and you truly think they're good at it, tell them.  Or, break out the green highlighter and get scribbling.  And Mom, I know you know this already, but I have been slowing down enough to work more.  Interestingly enough, at

120/206

I'm back in the territory of those same pages from May 2007 that you wrote that note on.