The Writing Life (OT)

Or the sort-of-writing sort-of life, but who's counting.

I worked hard on my book—one of my books—yesterday and this morning, and made good progress. I feel like I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. (No, not a train.) I have some difficult-for-me—nay, grueling for me—work upcoming. I have to sit down and block out the whole story, fashion it into chapters, and outline the chapters. It will take me hours (days?), and it will be very uncomfortable the whole way—organizing in all its shifty shapes and forms is not an aptitude I naturally have. However, I feel like once I have manageable chunks to work on, I'll be less lost, and first draft will go better. The goal is to finish the whole book in about half the target word count. That will be hard for me too because first draft tends to demoralize me. But then the fun can start. Jiggling the bits and pieces about, striking all the reallys and verys, finding the music, letting the flow flow, sharpening the drama—rewriting and revising over and over again, polishing—that's the phase I enjoy. I can do it endlessly. Rewriting will effortlessly expand the ms. ~1.5–2X and I'll be at the target length. Got to finish the hard part to get to the easy part.

Another good thing, when I get that far, is that I will be able to skip and jump around the chapters. When I get tired of working on one I can go work on another.

Whenever I get rolling on the book project, I have difficulty getting out of it again. Then when I get out of it, I have difficulty getting back into it again. When I'm into it, though, it's in my head 24/7—I think about it in the shower, on the way to the grocery store, doing laundry, exercising, feeding the dog. "Immersed" is the word. Trouble is, my life is not organized for that. I have dozens of things to do every day, posts and comments on TOP being the most important!

Speaking of which, I'd better get to work.  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Aakin]

Think of organizing the book as composing your photo. What are the key parts of the image? What are the leading lines? How do you want the viewers eyes to flow through the story?

You got this.

[Kye Wood]

Greg LeMond was a powerful influence on me in my early 20's.

Two things he said really stuck with me.

1.
QUESTION: Greg, why do you train where it's so brutally hot and hilly?

ANSWER: 'Because' it's so awful. There's pleasure in adversity.

2. "Train hard. Race easy".

You're doing the equivalent of the 'train' bit. In the brutal heat, up hills. The rest (the race) will be like coasting downhill.

Go Mike!!!

FYI - Greg LeMond won the Tour de France in 1986; he is the first non-European professional cyclist to win the men's Tour. He then won it two more times.

[Kent Wiley]

(Insert some appropriate words of encouragement here)

My own writing journey is slow and sporadic. I tend not to talk about the small progress made, mostly because I'm allergic to hyperbolic, loud mouthed braggarts full of themselves and their accomplishments which amount to little, and I fear being admitted to their ranks. I'm NOT including you in this group for reporting on progress with your book project. But I worry that talk about a project becomes the project, rather than the work on the project.

Please find the time to work on your book. But hey! What happened to the last Baker's Dozen? Another diversion you probably don't need right now...