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breakinglight11Feeling a bit... creatively blocked, at least as far as my writing goes. I put my book, Adonis, aside while I was working on Fallen Women, the newest Mrs. Hawking play, and since then I’ve been preoccupied with the staging of it. But I haven’t done any writing since then, really, and more and more my thoughts turn to wanting to fix the currently disastrous state of that novel.
As it currently stands, it really isn’t very good. It’s maybe not garbage all the way through, but it’s overall fairly bad. I want to fix it, but frankly I’m not sure how. I’m having trouble conceiving of exactly what it needs. I tend to approach my editing with a high-level goal in my mind, and works towards that goal by feel. Like, “Nathaniel’s fear needs to be more in the subtext.” Or “the Ripper’s rant needs to be scarier.” Or whatever. But for this, while I know it’s not right, I don’t really know what right IS in most cases. I don’t have a direction for what I need the editing to achieve.
My friend Mark recommended Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King as a reference for how to tell this kind of story, an Arthurian epic set just a little bit later in history. I enjoyed the book a lot, and I do think it’s a good model for the direction I should take rewriting my novel. But I’m struggling at how to synthesize my impressions of this book into a goal I can apply to my own work. I’m not sure what to shoot for because I can’t quite figure out how to name the effect I’m observing and would like to replicate.
I’m stressing out about it. I’m afraid I can’t write this story as well as I need to. I know I need to go through the drafting process, but when I don’t know what I’m aiming for, I don’t even know how to keep drafting. I’m feeling pretty discouraged.
As it currently stands, it really isn’t very good. It’s maybe not garbage all the way through, but it’s overall fairly bad. I want to fix it, but frankly I’m not sure how. I’m having trouble conceiving of exactly what it needs. I tend to approach my editing with a high-level goal in my mind, and works towards that goal by feel. Like, “Nathaniel’s fear needs to be more in the subtext.” Or “the Ripper’s rant needs to be scarier.” Or whatever. But for this, while I know it’s not right, I don’t really know what right IS in most cases. I don’t have a direction for what I need the editing to achieve.
My friend Mark recommended Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King as a reference for how to tell this kind of story, an Arthurian epic set just a little bit later in history. I enjoyed the book a lot, and I do think it’s a good model for the direction I should take rewriting my novel. But I’m struggling at how to synthesize my impressions of this book into a goal I can apply to my own work. I’m not sure what to shoot for because I can’t quite figure out how to name the effect I’m observing and would like to replicate.
I’m stressing out about it. I’m afraid I can’t write this story as well as I need to. I know I need to go through the drafting process, but when I don’t know what I’m aiming for, I don’t even know how to keep drafting. I’m feeling pretty discouraged.
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