I’m feeling like
this right now.
I started a novel
late last year – let’s call it Breakthrough
– and wrote three chapters for an assignment. My peers, who
critiqued the work, were mostly complimentary. My tutor gave me a High Distinction
and said it was spectacular work. I was very excited.
I did not make
the mistake of telling people. If
friends asked me what I was working on I said I didn’t like to discuss it. The
furthest I went was to write on my blog that “I was dabbling in the Gothic
genre”.
Then Christmas
came and I became a little distracted. I
didn’t write every day. Sometimes I didn’t write for several days.
I went overseas
in January / February and I didn’t write at all. When I say I didn’t write of
course I wrote blogs and emails, but I didn’t work on my manuscript.
Now I’ve been
back for over two months, and I’m still not writing. I may have written 2,000
words all told and they were hard and difficult words. I’ve written other
things, a short story for instance, so I can still write. I just can’t write
that story.
I’ve tried
various things to get around this. I’ve sat down with my protagonist, her name
is Hannah - it'a a palindrome (!) - and talked to her. I’ve approached the story from Part II. Then from
the end. I’ve got up early in the morning and written the first things
that came into my head – a writers’ block exercise.
In an effort to frighten
myself I got out the manuscript I interrupted to write Breakthrough – let’s call it Meander
– and looked at it. Told from multiple viewpoints it’s a very different story.
I believe it has promise because I didn’t say when I was reading it, Arghhh, this is rubbish, although of
course there were plenty of places where that applied. But Meander doesn’t have what Breakthrough
has. Meander will only ever be an
interesting, heart-warming story about relationships, whereas Breakthrough has the potential to be so
much more.
After countless
writing years and two completed novels and a degree in creative writing and two
writing prizes, I shouldn’t need help. I should be able to do this on my own.
Why can’t I?
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