Getting Going Now

I don’t have a laptop anymore, but I only wrote two chapters saved to my external storage thing. Everything else is on paper. Which I haven’t looked at since I stopped writing months ago. It’s all in my head.

I know how those two chapters go, too. They’re a great start. But I’m apparently ready for a different part of the story. This beast of an idea is going to be interesting to knit together once I’m done with all the pieces.

I wrote the garbage version about a week or so ago. The plot, the events, the idea of what was happening. Then I began moving into the next scene. Working through how the story progresses, but as I did, the first bit began expanding and growing in my head and I went back to it and began a rewrite.

My struggle is that I rush. It’s all moving so fast in my mind that I tend to rush it on the page. So my second rewrite focused on slowing down and really drawing out the characters, showing some motivation for their behavior. Same for my third. Reworking different ideas, giving the set more character.

Another difficulty for me is physical descriptions of people and spaces. I rarely get vivid visuals from books or my own imagination. So research it is! I looked at images of places like what I was writing about and drew a building layout. Then pulled faces from the right era and culture I’m basing it all on. This really helps me feel the scenes more.

Rewrite number four has definitely been slow. I’m getting better at sitting in this scene. I take ponder breaks where I work through a bit I’m stuck on, or work out another piece to be written later. Do dishes, clean a room, spend time with my family, stare at the wall.

It’s such a good feeling to be writing again. To be excited about my own story. To feel like I can actually do this. Obviously, I’m hoping to have it published someday, but all I really want is to have the story on paper for myself.