Taking a Break From Blogging Break (With Pearl!)
I am now taking a blogging break to try to revise and finish an old novel manuscript.
But right this minute I am taking a break from my blogging break because I will do anything rather than revise and finish this old novel manuscript.
Ha.
I very much want it to be done.
I don’t even mostly mind the work of doing it. Not when I am in the midst of such work.
I just have a hard time beginning and sticking to the work:
- because I have no faith that I can/will complete the task, meaning spending any time at all on it is a waste.
- because I have no faith that even if I do complete the task, it will be very good, or even if good, will be read, or liked. (Meaning spending any time at all on it is a waste.)
- because I hate making decisions and revising is a non-stop decision-making process. (As in–yes, cut this. And this. And this. And, should you re-write this? I mean, seriously. Are you actually improving anything here? Oh yes, and maybe you better put that back. I mean, it’s a plot point, right?) (Meaning that it’s not all that fun, meaning spending any time on it is a waste.)
Here’s where discipline comes in.
Meaning …that if I want to do this, I have to just make myself do it, even when I don’t want to.
Meaning…. better get back to it.
Meaning… Pearl, did you leave any for me? (To have with wine/whine.)
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Note that for the sake of my sanity and to escape the solitude of a big project I will probably be posting little whining notes like this every once in a while this month. Feel free to comment–encouragement is always welcome, but disparagement will probably feel more familiar (i.e. like talking to myself.) I will try to return visits, but may be slow.
Also, I am doing this during nanowrimo month to get some energy from collective prosing despair – but my project is really one of cutting not writing. This particular manuscript is already written and much too long.
Explore posts in the same categories: dog, Uncategorized, writingTags: dog will only edit for cheese, manicddaily, Pearl, revising old novel, sort of like nanowrimo
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ManicDDaily 
November 2, 2013 at 1:48 pm
PS- Pearl is a few years younger in the video. (Unfortunately, she can no longer read without glasses.)
November 2, 2013 at 3:23 pm
Enjoy your break. I know exactly where you’re coming from. 🙂
Greetings from London.
November 2, 2013 at 3:54 pm
*Sound of cracking whip*
November 2, 2013 at 4:28 pm
smiles… looks like pearl could be helpful in the editing process… she looks very professional with the book there you know…smiles.. all the best k.
November 2, 2013 at 5:32 pm
Well, I am completely in the dark about what is drawing you into this, k, so I won’t say anything serious, just hope you make some inroads into dealing with whatever is making you want to deal with it instead of write cool poetry and draw elephants for us. 😛
I say, why not leave it to be a great undiscovered work to be published posthumously(in the hopefully far far future) by your literary executors, and/or cleaning lady? Let someone else decide which sentences are “good’ enough, and which must be cast into outer darkness. It will make lots more money that way, too. ;_)
November 2, 2013 at 6:02 pm
Ha. Yes. The thing is I have about six or seven manuscripts of novels, believe it or not–at least four of them were considered by me to be quite complete at one point, were submitted various places and I thought “done.” And then, when they were not accepted places, I started revising them, and left off with each of them in a new mid-stream, so I no longer even know the latest draft.
I’m not sure that they represent me now at all, which is why it is hard to go back to them. But at a certain point, they meant a lot to me–I spent a great deal of time on them at least, i.e. years–
What is hard is that at least three of them were written when my children were at various ages, and represented the age of book that they were then dealing with–and now I feel very far from those ages, as my kids are grown. But I do hate to have them just lost. There may be something good there, I don’t know. So one last try.
This one is a young adult fantasy. If I can do something with it, I will move on to the others – maybe even an adult one, I don’t know.
November 4, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Sounds pretty scary to me, but then I consider writing prose to be torture. I can see how you would want to make something out of all that past effort, though.The timestream thing has got to be very difficult, trying to put yourself back in that place–makes me think of that Raymond Chandler quote I posted, about how impossible it is to make one’s writing ‘then’ into one’s writing ‘now.’ Good luck with it, and I hope your work week is not too hectic.
PS. Here is the Chandler quote:
“”There are things in my stories I might like to change or leave out altogether. To do this may look simple, but if you try, you find you cannot do it at all. You will only destroy what is good without having any noticeable effect on what is bad. You cannot recapture the mood, the state of innocence, much less the animal gusto you had when you had very little else. Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.”
~Raymond Chandler, Introduction to Trouble Is My Business
Not saying you will destroy what is good, btw!!! I know you could never do that..no matter how much you rewrote something.Just that getting back into the old place you were in when you wrote it has got to be rough.And I don;t know if you have to worry about losing your animal gusto with Pearl & elephants around. ;_)
November 4, 2013 at 9:54 pm
Yes, it is super difficult, which is why it’s taken so long. I’ve gotten too far from the original things. I don’t know that I can go back to them now. I just don’t know. In my case, I went through a stage of adding stuff, and that was wrong, but to take it all out now, seems impossible. I spent most of saturday doing newish writing for it, but I don’t care enough to actually re-write the whole thing as the new me, so I will either cut some and just keep as is, more or less, or forget about it, I think.
That is a very good quote from Chandler, and really useful. Thanks much for sending it. k.
November 2, 2013 at 7:29 pm
A bit of discipline is not a horrible thing for us geminis 😉
cheers to you!