Thinking about what I wrote this morning

[pegkerr]

I wrote about 325 words and sent them off to kijjohnson. She wrote back that she liked what I'd sent.

But all day long, I've been feeling uneasily dissatisfied with this morning's work. Why? I read it over, and think, well, yeah, technically it's okay. Sure, I see several edits I can make, to avoid a repetitious phrase or two. Nothing major. Maybe there isn't anything particularly interesting going on here stylistically. Is that the problem? Hmm. That could be developed further, if I think it's necessary.

As I try to give this scene the most realistic assessment possible, I can feel my gut still saying I'm not happy with it. Why?

It feels too . . . pat. Too glib. Emotions are too easily slotted in. He reveals the big thing. She gets mad--in her restrained Solveig sort of way, I mean. Revelation, reaction, and none of it's a surprise emotionally. I mean, what he is revealing is supposed to be a surprise, and I think that the book will set it up so that it will be a shock. I put Solveig in the position of realizing that a person she was beginning to trust was about to betray her. He's pulled back from the brink saying, I was going to do that, but I'm not going to do that now. How can I make her reaction feel real, unstudied, fresh, authentic? Fully human? Interesting? What does Solveig say or do, so that it doesn't look like The Big Confrontation scene from every cliche soap opera written? (Not that I watch soap operas much, you understand, but you know what I mean).

I'm trying to capture absolute authenticity here. How do I make her feel more real to me (and hopefully the reader)?

Is my unease useful at this point or not? I guess the best thing to do is to listen to my gut, make a note that I might run this scene past several different beta readers, just to capture other people's perceptions of how it's coming across. But I'm experienced enough to be aware that my unease may not be an accurate assessment of any real problem. I haven't written reliably for a long time, and now that I'm getting back to work, it's going to feel strange at first. My internal critic, just emerging from a long and confusing period of writer's block, may still be too hypersensitive in its calibration, and possibly needs to be dampened down further.

But I mustn't let anything stop my forward momentum.

So yeah, mark the scene to remind myself to run it past a few other readers. Remember, as I write, to do all I can to be as honest and authentic as I'm dealing with these people's emotions as I can be.

But most importantly, keep going.

Comments

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

Question for the author:

You seem to be writing in quite small chunks at a time. Do you not find this makes it harder to get it written? I would think that, say you left off in the middle of a scene that was being problematic, it would be harder to get back into the right mindset to carry on writing it? Does this happen to you at all?

The other thing I was vaguely wondering was if you ever get the urge to skip ahead and write a really really good bit that you've already plotted out, simply because you're getting bored with the part you were currently writing? You seem to be unhappy with this scene, and I usually combat that by going off and writing a bit that I really want to write.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think the problem might be from writing the scene and wanting the emotional punch without having written the stuff that leads up to it. In context, the scene might work, but the reader will by that point know J and S better than you do now.

I'd leave it and see how it feels when you have more things around it.

Good questions, Alex

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I write in really small chunks because I can only steal really small chunks of time to work. I find this annoying, rather than essential to my creative process. When I wrote my last two books, my kids were younger and went to bed earlier. And my husband didn't have to work every single &*@#$@! weekend day, like he does now.

What is extremely different about this book is that I am writing it all out of order, skipping to any scene that interests me. My previous two books were written beginning to end, strictly in scene order. I'm doing it out of order this time to circumvent my writer's block, just to get the words rolling. I find the experience of writing out of order both exciting and freeing--and a little bewildering. But I'm thinking that I'd like to assemble the scraps that I have in rough order and start trying to write a little more in a beginning-to-end direction. That's why I wrote today's entry about trying to figure out where the beginning is. Once I figure out that out, I hope to start working to give the book more of a shape I can recognize it--but with the understanding that I can still step back and skip around to a later part in the book if I find myself getting stuck.

Cheers,
Peg