Writing Disaster

Hello friends. I wish I was coming to you with a happier post, but I am having a writer’s crisis and need to write about it. Isn’t it funny how that works?

So when I started my current novel, I had a great idea. It was a big, beautiful idea. I couldn’t wait to read this book. So I started writing, and writing. I completed Camp NaNo. I was on a roll. The issue with my writing vigor is that I didn’t actually have a plan for the book. I had an idea, a beginning, and an end. The middle was something I would figure out as I went,  right?

Wrong. I’m 65,000 pages in and last week I started to really question the whole thing. I didn’t know where it was going. The middle was becoming a pointless and rambling mess. So I sat down and thought. I read writing books and I thought. I sat at the desk in front of my bay window and watched the clouds roll by, jealous of their clear direction that my book lacked.

Eventually I figured out where my book wanted to go and I realized that it’s basically a different book than I started writing. From my understanding this happens to writers quite often, so while I’m not upset that I need to make a change, I am upset that this is going to completely derail my writing goals. I wanted to finish this book in July, but now I am unsure that will happen. When I removed all the parts I decided not to use, I lost 10,000 words and a solid month’s worth of work. It’s a bummer, and I’m bummed. I might not be able to finish until the end of August, and I wanted so badly to write THE END this July.

But we move on, willing to accept our failures in order to make our books what they need to be. What they should be. I am excited that I know where to go and what I need to do to get it there.

Here’s a kitty cat.

 

Tetra thinks he is the best laundry helper in the whole world