Tonight, I was driving in the car with my mom and I was
telling her about the grant I spent all day working on when she stopped me
and said—Shouldn’t you be working on your novel?
Don’t you just hate it when moms are right?
The truth is, I’ve given my novel very little love this
summer. It pains me to admit it. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve been writing. I’ve
been writing all kinds of things—poetry, humor pieces, how-to articles,
personal essays, flash fiction—but not my novel.
I have a few theories.
One: Plain old procrastination
Two: Appetizer effect (Fill up on appetizers, have little
appetite for the main course)
Three: Up a creek (or spring run) without a routine
My summer has been all over the place. I’ve barely been in
one place longer than a week. There has been tragedy (personal and national), drama, beauty,
wanderings. Also, summer in Florida turns my energy level into that of a slug. (That's another theory I have. It's too hot to think or do anything at all besides submerge my body in a cold spring.)
I keep going back to last fall when I was able to produce a
first draft in a few months. Granted, that seems like the easy part—throwing all
of my ideas for scenes and conflict onto the page. Now I’ve got to do the dirty
work of taking it all apart and reassembling it so that it makes a compelling
story.
There is another lesson here and that is to be more discerning about what writing commitments I choose to uphold. There will always be contest deadlines, grant proposals, and submission periods to uphold, but I don't have to turn work into every single contest, or apply for every single grant, or submit to every single magazine. Especially not if it's taking precedent over a bigger (scarier) project, such as the novel in question.
Anyway, the truth of the matter is that writing will never
be easy. It will never be convenient. So I’ll stop my complaining and get to
work!
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| color coding chapters |
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| novel planning |
Stay Cool!
