Manuscript News
I’d been having some trouble reconnecting to my manuscript after my little hiatus. That was a tough spot to be in by itself, because it fed back into the guilt and resentment I’d been feeling during the hiatus. However, after giving it some real thought, I realized that the problems I was having with it started before I took a break. And after doing a read through of the last half dozen scenes I wrote, I was able to pinpoint what it was that was giving me such a hard time.
I talked about it in the last post about the hiatus: I had written myself into a corner. At the time, I told myself that was okay. It could all be fixed in revision, I just needed to keep moving forward regardless of that pesky little scene.
Well, reading over it and all the disjointed, messy, stunted scenes I had tried to write after it made it apparent that this was an error that could not wait until draft two to be revised.
So I committed to stripping out the last 2500 words and rewriting them entirely. To date, I’m not quite caught up to where I left off, but I feel so much better about what I’ve done.
Writing is such a fluid process. Sometimes, it will be better to just leave trouble spots to fix later, but there will also be times where it is necessary to do some on the spot revision. It’s not always going to be obvious which solution is the right one.
The Weekly Struggle
This week (and the week or two before, really) for me has been all about getting myself back into a healthy, positive mindset when it comes to my writing. I’m terrible at habit forming, and I tend to jump around from one fad to the next trying to find something that works for me.
Sometimes I wonder if the lack of consistency is part of process and I should just embrace it, but that’s neither here nor there.
A fellow writer I admire and follow on Twitter posted her writing To Do list last week, and throughout the day continued to post updates to it. I loved it. Mostly I loved the public accountability part and the way it drew her friends and followers into her process. I thought to myself, “I am so going to do that every day from now on.”
I realized 200 milliseconds later how ludicrous and annoying that would be.
I’ve had bad luck with To Do List productivity apps in the past (see above), but I thought that I would give a new one a try anyway. About twenty minutes and a few ill-fated downloads later, I was feeling dejected. My writing is tactile — as you all may know by now, I do almost everything longhand. Using my phone to track my daily goals and progress felt like a betrayal of my most fundamental sensibilities.
And then I remembered, belatedly, like a dope, that because I languish in longhand I carry a notebook and pens with me literally everywhere. At the time, hilariously, my drafting notebook was sitting about three inches to the left of my arm.
So, I flipped to a new page and I wrote out the writing-related tasks I would like to accomplish, complete with cute little check boxes that I could tick off.
Then, on a whim, underneath my list I wrote a few words to remind myself to keep my spirits up. I was (and still am) shaking off some depression-related doldrums and needed a boost. I’ve never understood the “affirmations” sections of the numerous planners I’ve bought and abandoned over the years, but that day, for whatever reason, it clicked.
Underneath that, I left a space for notes. I was researching new themes for this blog and I wrote down which ones I liked the best. I also jotted down various creative bits and bobs as they came to me (names, mostly; names of people, towns, chapters, etc.).
The next day I did it all over again. To do list. Affirmation. Notes.
And just like I started what I think is a rudimentary bullet journal.
Admittedly, I know very little about bullet journaling. I’ve done some cursory research into the subject, because I love fads and I will try almost any supposed productivity booster once, but at the time I found it to be too unstructured for my tastes. However, looking at what I’ve been up to the last week or so, maybe that which I rebelled against mentally is actually what I need. Not something I need to hold myself to rigidly (I’ve already taken a few days off from making these lists), but something fluid that I can utilize when I want or need it.
Honestly, I’m not really interested in whether or not what I’m doing falls into the “bullet journal” category. I don’t even know if it’ll stick. What I do know is that I get a very tiny surge of excitement and sense of accomplishment when I get to check off one of my little boxes. I know that writing my affirmations has helped me climb the hill of my various anxieties. And I know leaving myself a space to take notes, rather than relying on my memory, has already helped me stay in a creative state of mind, even when toiling away at my day job.
It’s working, for now at least, and that’s what matters.
Wow this one got long. I’ll be back with another post next week. Until then, may your writing be plentiful and your struggles be few!
Kerry Share
or
Just Another Struggling Writer 
Leave a Reply