Sunday, November 20, 2005

The Internal Editor . . .

She's a harsh mistress.

::sigh::

118 pages. Fourteen scheduled for today. I hope.

Is it my imagination or did writing used to come more easily? I remember racing home to write, plotting every second of my drive to and from work, daydreaming about my books in the middle of the work day. I don't seem to do that anymore. But why?

I still love to write. I still think I'm pretty good at it. And now that I've sold my first book, I really need to be able to produce good stuff quickly in the future. But the ideas don't seem to flow like they used to. The stories don't come together in my mind as easily.

Is it the pressure of having sold? Am I just going through a dry spell? Am I not disciplined enough? Or am I afraid of success? (Calling Dr. Phil . . .)

Or maybe writing was a lot easier when I didn't actually know how to write, how to plot a story with enough conflict to sustain it. Maybe it was easier to write when the stories just weren't up to par.

I'll let you know if I ever figure it out.

3 comments:

Bobbie (Sunny) Cole said...

Reading through your blog, and this one struck home with me. Knowledge does have it's price, doesn't it? - lol. (and consequences)

Best on the WIP. From your last post, it seems to be going better and better.

Paula said...

My WIP is...interesting. I had a five page prologue that I was pretty happy with, and that didn't change when I started revising. But everything else did, at least the nuts and bolts of how I introduced the hero and the heroine to each other. The first was a complete rewrite. Only in the second chapter have I been able to partially weave together some of the first version of the story.

I'm hopeful that as the book re-evolves, I'll be able to use more of what I already wrote, but I'm not sure how much.

Paula said...

Um...make that "The first CHAPTER was a complete rewrite."

Proofreading is my friend.