Today was most frustrating on the writing-front. I struggled early on because of getting up a bit late, not having a rigid schedule, and the building taking away some of my focus and energy.
BUT…I did rally, and I did get three hours of work in. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. That does put me behind, but not too much. Tomorrow, I must rally again and get through the rest of the book, and then dive into what’s next: writing up scene cards for each of the scenes in the book.
I am actually glad I stopped, though. I was at the point where I was just going through the motions with what I was doing. I wasn’t really paying attention. That’s no good. The negative voices in my head were too loud. I wasn’t reading the manuscript with fresh, eager eyes.
There are rather large sections of the book still that were written with the “just get through this” energy. That’s also no good. It means that there are holes in the story; things, rather large things, need to be fixed.
But here’s the truth: everything is fixable.
I have had some 15,000-foot perspective on this book. I had it on Monday, and I had some more of it today. It *is* starting to come into focus why those sections of “just get through this” writing exist. And I *am* having good ideas on how to fix them.
So…it is progress. And slamming my head up against the wall isn’t going to help me. It really isn’t.
I should ask some authors out there what they do when they get to that point, where they know that it’s actually NOT worth pushing through whatever activity it is that they’re doing because the brain is just not in the right place. The negative voices are too loud. Or…*do* they actually just push through, and if so, how do they fix the mess they’ve made by doing it?
I’d be very interested to know what they do.
For me, it was to shut it down for the evening. I was too tired. That’s really what it was. I was tired. I needed to rest, and I need to get up in the morning, and start fresh.
So, that’s what’s happening. Going to bed early tonight, and gonna wake up tomorrow and crash through the rest of this book before lunch. That’s. The. Plan.
We suffer setbacks. We keep moving forward. Always move forward.
That’s how the sausage is made.