So I have a confession to make: a couple of days ago, when I was in something of a rough spot with my current novel, Stars of Blood and Glory, I had this overwhelming urge to go back and revisit Star Wanderers. In two days, I went through everything I’d written up to the point where I’d gotten stuck, and something just clicked. All of a sudden, I knew exactly where to take the story.
So today, I sat down and wrote the next scene…and man, it was hot! The words were flying, the characters were leaping off the page (and almost into the sack with each other–almost, but not quite)–it was awesome! The flame for this project has definitely been rekindled, and I’m really enthusiastic to get it rolling again.
Trouble is, I’m already working on Stars of Blood and Glory–and making some good progress on that one as well. In fact, I’m still quite excited about it. I’ve got all the twists planned out, the characters are really coming alive, and while the manuscript is still pretty rough, none of the problems are too serious to stop the creative process.
But sometimes…well, sometimes I feel like I’ve been writing so fast on this one, that the story hasn’t had time to really percolate. I’ll have the next few scenes planned out, but I just won’t want to write them–not because I’m lazy, I don’t think, but because it hasn’t really clicked yet in my mind.
This is something I’m slowly coming to grips with. The creative writing process isn’t something you can completely capture with metrics (like daily/weekly word counts, hours worked, writing rates etc). There’s a whole lot of mental-space work that, on the outside, looks a whole lot like procrastination or laziness–and can easily degenerate into that, if you aren’t careful. However, these mental activities are absolutely crucial, because they serve to refill the creative well. Without them, writing becomes painfully difficult, and the quality of the stuff you do manage to put out tends to suffer.
That’s what I’m starting to notice, in any case. I’ve found it somewhat helpful to go on a long walk each day, like maybe for an hour or more, but I wonder if it might also be helpful to have multiple projects to fall back on, so that even if I’ve got to refill the well for one of my projects, I can still be actively creating.
Because it’s more complicated than just outlining the next chapters. The best scenes to write are the ones that go off in their own direction, without any planning (or perhaps minimal planning) on my part. Discovery writing is definitely a part of my process. To make that happen, however, I have to get a real feel for what’s happened up to that point, and think through all the implications of their possible choices. If I do it right, something I haven’t considered comes to mind, and it helps the scene to come to life enough for me to write through it.
So yeah. For Star Wanderers, the ideas have been percolating since a conversation I had with my brother in law and former roommate over Christmas break. For Stars of Blood and Glory, I feel almost as if I’m going too fast to percolate–or that at least I need to take a little time off here or there. And the real trouble is that I’m probably going to be going overseas in a couple of weeks–which means that all the free time I enjoy right now is probably going to become extremely scarce in the near future.
So I’m going to do my best to finish Stars of Blood and Glory before the end of the month, but if I’m not getting enough prewriting in to do the story justice, I’m not going to push it. And when I’m not working on that one, I’ll work on Star Wanderers, since I’m really in love with this project (seriously, very much in love) and it’s not in my heart to put it off any longer. I just hope that it doesn’t get in the way…
Anyhow, if I’m going to pound out another 4k to 5k tomorrow, I’d better get to bed. I’ll leave you with this:
Man, I need to get this girl to do the soundtrack for my life. Either that, or my next book, which pretty much amounts to the same thing. 😛
G’night!
