Blog Dis
Push and Pull
2024-12-24
Blog dis: Push and Pull
Writing often feels like a delicate balance between desire, available time and the creative spark, which doesn't always co-operate when you want it to co-operate. Getting started is a problem for many, while others get bogged down in re-writes and still others become sidetracked with other life priorities.
I believe that I suffer from the last of these, becoming pulled away by other priorities, such as work, outdoor activities and exhaustion. Granted, I admit that I've been fortunate with my first series of six novels, to feel confident with my ideas, and how they were presented, and how I had implemented them at the outset, including re-writes. I find, however, that my wheels can some times fall off or spin in multiple directions as I attempt to juggle multiple priorities.
Presently, my eighth novel has begun, just the first chapter, mind you. The opening paragraph and the full first chapter have typically been my least strong point when I start a new novel. I want the first chapter to be perfect before I press on, rather than to pull together some hodge-podge idea and then just move on, as some writers do, telling themselves they'll fine-tune the first chapter down the road. Not me. I need to know that the first chapter is in the can, so that I can feel comfortable before I plunge into the next one. It is a process, and we each find our level, the way water finds its level, spilling into each crevice, until there's no more room left.
Such is the process of my writing routine.
We are now heading into 2025, and my goal is to make serious headway into novel eight, which I am spring-boarding off my seventh novel, POM. So appropriately, novel eight is being titled POM II and I already have a cover design that I adore, thanks to my graphic design
@fantasy_art_z
, in order that I may keep it open on my computer for inspiration while I write. When I had finished the laborious process of editing novel seven, all 770 pages, some 265,000+ words, my editor dropped at my feet her blunt recommendation, "Start writing the next one, rather than wait." She's right, of course, and dastardly. 😂If you wait too long, you lose your edge, and returning to a follow-up novel that continues the saga from its previous, will only mean that you may potentially fall deeper into a sinkhole. Nobody needs sinkholes unless they're connected to sewers, not novels.
Sometimes your writing agenda pushes you to new heights and at other times it pulls you down. Every writer will tell you that their brain never stops, which is why I keep notebooks with plot points, that come to me at the oddest moments, like working out on my indoor bike. And because I didn't wait to begin novel eight, I've been re-reading my seventh novel POM, while I cycle in the morning to music videos, despite having read POM I'm sure at least 25 times, while in the process of writing it for the last nine years. Writers are masochists, of this I am convinced. Now, as I read through POM, yet again, one chapter at a time, because my time on the indoor bike is limited, my brain lights up with new ideas for novel eight.
Do you see what it means now to be an author? Our work is never done, much like any other artist who paints, makes music, or who gets up on stage and does stand-up comedy, or improv or recites lines from a stage play. It never ends, and so it shouldn't, for the day when it ends, the artist is dead, or in the process of dying. Let us all hope that death comes quickly to each artist, but only after we've completed our current art project.
Over the holidays, I step away from writing as I do each year, to give myself a length of distance from myself as the author, and to gain perspective. I won't work on my 8th novel, nor will I issue a blog post or a poem after today, not until the New Year. The good thing about not having millions of followers is that I won't be missed... maybe by one or some but not by many. It's one of the hardest facts of life, that we want to believe our absence will be missed. Truth is most of us won't be remembered by followers one month, one year, much less five years after our passing. But our art will be remembered!
Now is as good a time as any to drop this older picture of myself. For an author photo-shoot, I thought it would be a good idea to bring along some rolled up laminates of the covers from my first series in order that my photographer could snap a variety of options, to show me inter-acting with my characters. All the covers for my first Crimson Fantasy series have long since been re-designed. However, there's still something appealing to me about the original, raw cover design for novel two.
My mouth is open wide, and I'll leave it up to your imagination as to why my mouth is open... or rather why it was open - past tense, after all.
Happy Holidays!! 🎄I wish you downtime and some meaningful moments and exchanges with loved ones.
Writing often feels like a delicate balance between desire, available time and the creative spark, which doesn't always co-operate when you want it to co-operate. Getting started is a problem for many, while others get bogged down in re-writes and still others become sidetracked with other life priorities.
I believe that I suffer from the last of these, becoming pulled away by other priorities, such as work, outdoor activities and exhaustion. Granted, I admit that I've been fortunate with my first series of six novels, to feel confident with my ideas, and how they were presented, and how I had implemented them at the outset, including re-writes. I find, however, that my wheels can some times fall off or spin in multiple directions as I attempt to juggle multiple priorities.
Presently, my eighth novel has begun, just the first chapter, mind you. The opening paragraph and the full first chapter have typically been my least strong point when I start a new novel. I want the first chapter to be perfect before I press on, rather than to pull together some hodge-podge idea and then just move on, as some writers do, telling themselves they'll fine-tune the first chapter down the road. Not me. I need to know that the first chapter is in the can, so that I can feel comfortable before I plunge into the next one. It is a process, and we each find our level, the way water finds its level, spilling into each crevice, until there's no more room left.
Such is the process of my writing routine.
We are now heading into 2025, and my goal is to make serious headway into novel eight, which I am spring-boarding off my seventh novel, POM. So appropriately, novel eight is being titled POM II and I already have a cover design that I adore, thanks to my graphic design
@fantasy_art_z
, in order that I may keep it open on my computer for inspiration while I write. When I had finished the laborious process of editing novel seven, all 770 pages, some 265,000+ words, my editor dropped at my feet her blunt recommendation, "Start writing the next one, rather than wait." She's right, of course, and dastardly. 😂If you wait too long, you lose your edge, and returning to a follow-up novel that continues the saga from its previous, will only mean that you may potentially fall deeper into a sinkhole. Nobody needs sinkholes unless they're connected to sewers, not novels.
Sometimes your writing agenda pushes you to new heights and at other times it pulls you down. Every writer will tell you that their brain never stops, which is why I keep notebooks with plot points, that come to me at the oddest moments, like working out on my indoor bike. And because I didn't wait to begin novel eight, I've been re-reading my seventh novel POM, while I cycle in the morning to music videos, despite having read POM I'm sure at least 25 times, while in the process of writing it for the last nine years. Writers are masochists, of this I am convinced. Now, as I read through POM, yet again, one chapter at a time, because my time on the indoor bike is limited, my brain lights up with new ideas for novel eight.
Do you see what it means now to be an author? Our work is never done, much like any other artist who paints, makes music, or who gets up on stage and does stand-up comedy, or improv or recites lines from a stage play. It never ends, and so it shouldn't, for the day when it ends, the artist is dead, or in the process of dying. Let us all hope that death comes quickly to each artist, but only after we've completed our current art project.
Over the holidays, I step away from writing as I do each year, to give myself a length of distance from myself as the author, and to gain perspective. I won't work on my 8th novel, nor will I issue a blog post or a poem after today, not until the New Year. The good thing about not having millions of followers is that I won't be missed... maybe by one or some but not by many. It's one of the hardest facts of life, that we want to believe our absence will be missed. Truth is most of us won't be remembered by followers one month, one year, much less five years after our passing. But our art will be remembered!
Now is as good a time as any to drop this older picture of myself. For an author photo-shoot, I thought it would be a good idea to bring along some rolled up laminates of the covers from my first series in order that my photographer could snap a variety of options, to show me inter-acting with my characters. All the covers for my first Crimson Fantasy series have long since been re-designed. However, there's still something appealing to me about the original, raw cover design for novel two.
My mouth is open wide, and I'll leave it up to your imagination as to why my mouth is open... or rather why it was open - past tense, after all.
Happy Holidays!! 🎄I wish you downtime and some meaningful moments and exchanges with loved ones.
