Gosh darn it, I still haven't gotten anything done.
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'Grats!I don't know if this will help, but I'll throw it out there anyway.
I'm an ersatz author. Bunches of short stories, a couple novellas, a short novel. Might someday see the light of day (other than my blog), might not. But those aren't the point. That's just said to establish that I like to write, however imperfectly.
The point is that about 15 or so years ago, I'd started on the Great American Novel. It had a theme and a story that I thought needed me to tell it. And I had this one scene in mind. It was going to be suspenseful and dramatic, and it was going to make the reader turn to the next page.
And I got stuck. I couldn't bridge my story to that scene. I bogged down. I walked away from the story, thought about it, might've come back to write a paragraph or two here or there, but I was stuck.
Now switch over to Stephen King's On Writing. In it, he quotes William Faulkner, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's basically, "In writing, you must kill your darlings."
I picked up the draft again a month ago. I'm looking at it, and crap! I was writing really well! Better than I am now! I read it, was rather gripped with the story, and when I got to the end of the draft, I thought, "No wonder I couldn't bridge to that dramatic scene. It's not consistent with that character and doesn't flow with the story!"
So I killed that darling, started writing on the story a few weeks later, and I've added 12,000 words since then, and I'm on my way to finishing it (it's about 81,000 words now, with about 30,000 to go. I think).
Don't be afraid to kill your darlings. Your story has a soul. Make sure you keep true to it. If you're in tune with the soul, the writing will flow.
I love this post so much. Thanks!Have you thought about joining a writers' group, or participating in something like National Novel Writing Month? Keep in mind, by the time SK published Carrie, he'd already written four other novels and tons of short stories. Perfection is great, but there are two purposes to writing as I see it: 1: to get something out of you that HAS TO COME OUT, and 2: to have others read it and get something out of it. At this point you've done one of those. Is it time to do the other?
congrats!So, I passed my history class with an A. I've been trying to make a lot of progress on my first draft of Alphaboy, but life always gets in the way. Oh well.
Have you tried a dictation app.. ? Sounds ridiculously silly to ask, because I am sure you have.My thoughts race. My fingers are constantly hitting the wrong keys, so I have to press the BACKSPACE button A LOT. My hands shake.
I did, but for some reason, I uninstalled it. I feel more comfortable actually touching the keyboard, anyways.Have you tried a dictation app.. ? Sounds ridiculously silly to ask, because I am sure you have.