Nothing got better. I continue to not know what I’m doing. It’s frustrating and demoralizing. I can’t get a real handle on this thing.
What I have to do is read a few books on the subject. I’ve ordered some and hope they come soon. Not fiction. In other words, I have to take a course, a class. My own. I’ve done this before. When I was getting ready to write Donato & Daughter I read a lot of true cop books. It was very helpful. I couldn’t point to any part of the novel now and say “this is what I learned from blank blank” but the studying of the cop books gave me an understanding, familiarity and confidence that I hadn’t had.
Before I wrote my first P.I. I read all the P.I. books I could. This time they were novels.
So, I’m going to try this method again. It’s one thing to not know where you’re going in a form you know how to write. Another to not know where you’re going with a form you don’t know how to write.
I hate having to stop to do this. It gets me all off schedule. But there’s no schedule to be on if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. So if I’m going to give this book a chance to see the light of day, I have to go to school for about a week or two.
Good thing no one is waiting for this one.
4 comments:
Good luck with the school. Hope you learn more than you hoped to. And yes, am an Indian. But it's perplexing. Though am putting off writing the serious book for as long as I will take to get convinced that I've mastered the vocabulary, I am not sure I will ever be able to figure out when I master it. Because like they say, the more you know, the more you have to know. And it's so true. It's perplexing, like I said.
I'm sorry you're having a horrible time now, Sandra. Maybe you could try stepping away from that particular work for a longer period of time? It might look better to you when you come back to it again.
The following isn't meant as advice; it's just what I do. If writing a particular story starts to strangle me, I kill it before it can finish the job. And if it turns out I ultimately can kill it, like, forever, then that story was probably pretty dead on arrival. I'll likely come up with other story ideas.
Hey, I'm enjoying this bonus mystery that you are creating right here in the midst of your current writing journey. The tension is unbearable. What genre, what type of protagonist, what do they do for a living, what era does this take place in, what the hell happened (anything?) to whom, and most fascinating, what is it that's new for you that requires research? No deadline and the lovely paradox of traveling where you claim you can not go? Wow. Doesn't sound horrible to me, sounds like FUN!
Good luck, Sandra! I'm stuck, too, at the mo.
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