Sometimes you need to take a step backward to take a step forward.
Drop back 10 and punt.
Today I deleted everything I'd written so far in V&A 3. Sadly, it wasn't much and even though I re-did nearly all of chapter 1 again, I'm still a net loss of words on the day.
No idea why I was disappointed with what I'd written the first time, but the second time, I'm happier. Perhaps I wasn't in the headspace of the characters as quickly as I thought I would be after jumping from ASH2 into V&A3. I lost track of one character by the time I started chapter 2 and… it just wasn't going well at all.
So, I started over. I kept the beats of chapter 1, just not the words. I already knew how the story was going to start, and so it did. Just not cleanly or as I would have liked.
You can't be afraid to delete words (or copy them out of one file into a 'trash' file. Sometimes the art won't happen. Painters paint over bad paintings. Digital artists will redraw the same line a dozen times to get it right (Check out Drawfee https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoal_hpPIPAnWlG-kWHLheA to see real-time artists, it's funny, but you can see what I'm talking about).
Tomorrow, I'll write more words and be back on track. Probably hitting a better stride than I did in the first week on this book. I knew it wasn't right and the impromptu trip to Ensenada didn't help my headspace with regards to the story.
With a clearer head, I will make it happens.
Posted on October 16, 2018, in Blog Post. Bookmark the permalink.	Leave a comment.