You don't know me, and I hope you don't mind me chiming in -- I found your LJ through several odd jumps, but I've continued to read it because I find your Glare Reports and other related posts strangely reassuring. I'm also a writer and a mom, have also published two novels and am working on a third which is kicking my ass, and I also feel just about every day of my life that I am a terrible writer and should just give up. Honestly, finding someone else whose life has these resonances with mine is a bit of a treat.
About the decision trees -- as splagxna said, you CAN do it over. This is something I learned to some degree with my second novel, and am learning much more with the current one. You can go all the way back to where you made a decision, take the other road and start again, and yeah it's an awful wrench and makes you feel that you've wasted months/years of your life, but I've seen stories that I thought were dying on me jump to life again when I've done this, and that makes it worthwhile. I have tended to want to have a finished book on the first or second draft -- the first time through I did. But the longer we write, the more complex the challenges we set for ourselves, and the longer and harder the process can become. (Someone who's working on her first novel asked me last month if it got easier as you went along, and I regretfully had to tell her that, no, in my experience it just got harder and harder). I made a wrong decision partway into the current book -- not impossibly wrong, but a decision that took the story in the direction of being less interesting than it might -- and I've had to go back to that point and start again, and there's been a lot of throwing out of material that is, in and of itself, not bad; but also a new jolt of energy, which can only be a good thing.
The other thing I do, which may or may not work for you, is play scenarios in my head a lot. Walk along the different branches of the decision tree and see which one feels the best. The good thing about this is that I can do it while cleaning house or buying groceries or riding the subway or doing any other kind of routine chores that don't engage too much of my mind; it's not confined to the hours that I can get at my desk. It does mean that at certain points I'm living more in a world of fantasy than in the real world, and I have to pull myself out of it pretty forcibly to do things that _do_ require thought. But it's helpful.
Anyway, all I really have to say is, best of luck, and as long as writing these entries helps you, please do, because it helps me to read them.
no subject
You don't know me, and I hope you don't mind me chiming in -- I found your LJ through several odd jumps, but I've continued to read it because I find your Glare Reports and other related posts strangely reassuring. I'm also a writer and a mom, have also published two novels and am working on a third which is kicking my ass, and I also feel just about every day of my life that I am a terrible writer and should just give up. Honestly, finding someone else whose life has these resonances with mine is a bit of a treat.
About the decision trees -- as splagxna said, you CAN do it over. This is something I learned to some degree with my second novel, and am learning much more with the current one. You can go all the way back to where you made a decision, take the other road and start again, and yeah it's an awful wrench and makes you feel that you've wasted months/years of your life, but I've seen stories that I thought were dying on me jump to life again when I've done this, and that makes it worthwhile. I have tended to want to have a finished book on the first or second draft -- the first time through I did. But the longer we write, the more complex the challenges we set for ourselves, and the longer and harder the process can become. (Someone who's working on her first novel asked me last month if it got easier as you went along, and I regretfully had to tell her that, no, in my experience it just got harder and harder). I made a wrong decision partway into the current book -- not impossibly wrong, but a decision that took the story in the direction of being less interesting than it might -- and I've had to go back to that point and start again, and there's been a lot of throwing out of material that is, in and of itself, not bad; but also a new jolt of energy, which can only be a good thing.
The other thing I do, which may or may not work for you, is play scenarios in my head a lot. Walk along the different branches of the decision tree and see which one feels the best. The good thing about this is that I can do it while cleaning house or buying groceries or riding the subway or doing any other kind of routine chores that don't engage too much of my mind; it's not confined to the hours that I can get at my desk. It does mean that at certain points I'm living more in a world of fantasy than in the real world, and I have to pull myself out of it pretty forcibly to do things that _do_ require thought. But it's helpful.
Anyway, all I really have to say is, best of luck, and as long as writing these entries helps you, please do, because it helps me to read them.
maggie h