When Things Are, Surprisingly, Okay

It’s Monday. Not traditionally my favourite day of the week, but this week I’m feeling – well, okay.

I did some writing last week. It wasn’t as much as I’d hoped I’d do, but I’m reasonably happy with how it went. I have yet to read over it, of course, which is always akin to ripping off a sticking plaster, but we’ll get through that. Things went in slightly unexpected directions, and steps were taken towards the development of a plot, and so that has to be good. Right?

Skeptical cat is skeptical.
Photo Credit: wadam via Compfight cc

Well, we’ll see. This is the fourth incarnation of this particular story. I’ve junked a draft of twenty thousand words, and over the past three or four weeks I’ve managed to write a draft of almost twenty thousand words, and I really want to bring this draft to a satisfactory end before I get heartily and irrevocably sick of the entire thing. Much as this tale has dogged my steps for the last decade, if this draft doesn’t work, there won’t be a draft five.

I’m not at that stage yet, though, which is – of course – another good thing. I’m constantly reminding myself that life is full of good things, if you know where to look (and you keep your eyes peeled). It’s hard to remember this when you feel constantly bombarded with Bad News and the horrors of the world, but it helps to bring things back to a small focus, sometimes. We’re okay. I’m okay. This moment, right here, is okay.

So, despite the fact that it’s blowing an absolute gale outside, I think today will be an okay day. I’m ready to get cracking, and let things come as they will. It’s good to remind myself that a day in which I get anything written (in the jaws of everything else that’s going on in my life/head) is a good day, and that a day in which I get a thousand words down is better than a day in which I get five hundred down, and a day in which I get five hundred written is better than a day in which I stare, burned-out, at the screen, blinking away my own scalding tears.

Today won’t be a day like that. Today, I’m feeling okay – and I haven’t even had my morning cup of tea yet. Today, I will write words. I may not write a thousand, but I will write some – and that is all good.

I’m probably feeling okay today because I had a happy weekend, spent with my dear one, and yesterday the weather was glorious, so we took a drive around the countryside. It was such a soul-lift to see sunshine in the fields and a blue sky overhead (even if the wind was still cold enough to freeze the blood), and I hope that feeling will remain with me throughout this week. Of course, chances are it’ll have dissipated by lunchtime today, but no matter. It’s here now, and that means things, right this moment, in this tiny time-bubble, are okay.

So, I guess I’d better get cracking.

The best of good luck with your projects, and your work, and your life, this week; I hope you’re all feeling okay, too. If you’re not, I recommend going and looking at some nature, and taking a few deep breaths, and feeling the aliveness in your veins and muscles and bones, and taking a moment to be thankful that you have a moment to be thankful in. It usually works for me.

The Little Story that Could

So, turns out I’m writing the Never-Ending Story.

No – not this one (unfortunately):

Image: ncwardwebb.blogspot.com

What I mean is, I’m finding myself wondering who’s in control of my brain lately – me, or a certain Miss Emmeline Widget, aged nine-and-three-quarters. At the moment, it’s Emmeline 1, me 0.

For some reason, I have been writing lots of words over the past week or so. Every day I sit down to work a little more on ‘Emmeline’, telling myself ‘Yup. This is definitely going to be the day. This day will be the day you’ll finish this darn book.’ But it just doesn’t happen. Words keep coming, squeezing out of my mind like toothpaste out of a near-empty tube.

Just when I think I have a handle on what’s going on, I find the plot deciding to take another jaunt down Unexpected Avenue, ending up at a place I didn’t know I was going until I got there. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; it’s actually a whole lot of fun. However, it does make it hard to know how I’m going to trim enough out of the book – once that mystical place known as ‘Done’ has been reached – to make it sit neatly inside an acceptable word count. At the rate I’m going, I’ll need to shed something like 10,000 words, and that will hurt. A lot.

I’ve been trying to just forget about all of this and go with the flow, putting the words down as they come to me and not caring about anything else. This, however, is not something that comes easily to me. I have always wanted to be a tie-dye, flower-haired, ‘all-is-one-here-have-a-crystal’ type, but really I have the soul of a person who wears all their pens in their top pocket and who likes to know What Is Going On at every given moment. So, the fact that I am dealing with a recalcitrant book which is, apparently, telling me who’s boss, is a bit uncomfortable.

Yes, yes. But which one is the writer, and which one the book? *That* is the question. Image: jamesclear.com

It’s all part and parcel of being a pantser, I suppose. I certainly feels a lot freer than trying to write within a rigid plot, but with great freedom comes great terror, sometimes.

But perhaps it’s not all my fault. I reckon a portion of the blame has to lie with my fictional folk, too. Call me crazy, but I’ve often felt that characters in books have more of a life than anyone suspects. It really does feel, to me, that Emmeline and her friends just aren’t finished playing yet, and they won’t allow their story to come to an end – not until they’re good and ready, at least. If that’s the case, then what’s a writer to do but hang on and hope for the best? I hope that this is a good thing – as in, when I read my work over in the weeks to come, that it won’t seem drawn out, or extraneous, or ‘puffed up’ for effect; I hope that the story I’m telling will be fast-moving, exciting, interesting, fun (except for the scary bits), and as good to read as it was to write. If the writing process feels a bit out of control, the worry is – of course – that the reading experience will feel much the same.

But I won’t know that for a few weeks yet, of course. Perhaps, if things carry on the way they’ve been for the past while, I may never know.*

I’m sure there are people who think that sitting down to write every day must be the most boring thing imaginable. ‘What – you spend hours staring at a computer screen, by yourself, listening to the voices in your head, and staring at the wall when you need a rest from the sheer overwhelming excitement? Wow.’ To those people, I say: ‘Actually, it’s rather like being at the helm of a ship in a storm-tossed sea, with no land in sight. You’re the captain, and you think you know what you’re doing, but the waves have other ideas – and, no two are the same.’

Land’s not in sight yet, not for me at least. But – so far – the voyage has been worth it.

Image: devwebpro.com

I’m off to do battle with my book once more; wish me luck, do. Perhaps today will be the day I bring her into harbour.

(All right – enough with the nautical metaphors. Tally-ho!)

 

*Of course, I don’t mean this. The first rule of writing, as everyone knows, is ‘Finish Your Work.’ This is truth. I will finish ‘Emmeline’, and the work will be done, and it shall not defeat me. But sometimes it’s hard to remember that when the book has you in a choke-hold. Anyway.