Stuck in a Hurry

I ended last year and started this year the same way many writers do: setting unrealistic goals for myself and questioning everything I thought to be true and believed in while watching my self-imposed deadlines pass and seeing my idealized timelines wither and die untended. 

I have the best intentions. Really I do.

However, the road to hell and mediocrity is paved with the best of good intentions. 

In another post on an earlier incarnation of this site I wrote about re-learning how to write. That is still true.

I have learned that I am most definitely not a pantser and need an outline and plot to write a coherent story. I tried the just sit down and write method and it didn’t end well any of the times I tried it. 

There are stories about how Chuck Palahniuk wrote the first draft of Fight Club in two weeks or Steven King writes thousands of words seemingly effortlessly.

However, and this is a big one I need to constantly remind myself of, it wasn’t always like that for them. Having read both of their writing craft memoirs (On Writing and Consider This and I highly recommend both) I know that even for these accomplished authors words don’t automatically flow out onto the page or screen as soon as they sit down to write. 

For all writers there is a lot that goes into the creation of every story and that’s the part I keep forgetting. I have a few pretty decent ideas (at least I think they’re pretty decent) but I need to take the time and give myself the time to flesh them out and organize my thoughts rather than put unnecessary pressure on myself to create a perfectly crafted novel on the first try because that’s not how this works. That’s now how any of this works. 

Reading books and articles and listening to podcasts about writing and publishing has helped me slow down and realize that if I rush myself I’m not going to be happy with what I produce and then I will most likely end up with hundreds of notebook pages with opening paragraphs and zippy dialogue that never found a home in the novel, short story, or script where they were meant to live. 

There’s something oddly therapeutic about writing blog posts about my writing endeavor failures and lessons learned.