Posted by mommaty on
February 10, 2009
I've been writing a novel for two years now. It isn't the first novel I've ever written, but it will be the first I will eventually show people - hopefully my agent and others. What's taking so long? Good question, though difficult to answer in a quick blog post. It's hellish. My first book, Behind Bars: The Straight-Up Tales of a Big City Bartender, was nothing compared to this. After all, that was a memoir, everything had happened, I just had to document it in an organized witty way - which I hope I accomplished.
The most challenging part of writing every day (besides the utter isolation), is snapping out of the story. Living in one's head is incredibly difficult when trying to maintain a *normal* family life, as trying to break out of character takes some time. Not a good idea to be writing right before dinner... especially if you want to chit chat about whatever whilst passing the butter. Last night I couldn't stop thinking about a dream I had about one of the characters in the book. Sometimes a character, whether fictional or real, will take over your life. I haven't been able to stop thinking about him for longer than five minutes. What would he do at dinner? Would he talk about the rumored coup? Would he go on a hunger strike? Yada yada... So stop writing at least an hour before dinner. It's quite distracting.
The issue is that writing is such a grueling process. I hadn't mapped it out as well as I thought from the start. Then a minor character became a major player, thus changing the landscape completely. So around Thanksgiving of last year, I had to trash all of the previous version of the book and start anew with what I had. What helped tremendously was outlining the story from beginning to end, leaving less moments to writer's block, and more to just "aha!" moments, as the process resumed. I can't emphasize enough how important it has been to flesh out every single character, every scene, ever intimation. If I had done that sooner, I might have been finished by now, instead of having to trash 350 pages of story that really needed that extra something.
xo
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