Tom
Istar
Recently, I realized I seriously needed to do something about Southerner, my sort-of-high-fantasy WIP.
Some of you may remember me stating somewhere that I've been working on this story since friggin' seventh grade. I've changed a lot since then (obviously), and as I've grown and become more complex, so has the story. The result?
A great big goddamn mess.
I barely know what's going on in the story now, as it's devolved into a huge mass of tangled plot threads and dropped stitches of failed ideas that I never bothered to clean up. I can never get anything done when I open up the story to work on it--the old material catches my eye, and I groan to myself, start editing, and forget that my objective going in was to actually write some new material.
So I'm just going to start fresh. Screw the old stuff. I'm just going to open a new document, and start writing the story from the point I left off on the old one. I will ignore all the editing that I need to do. The editing itself is not bad--it's necessary to clean up the bad storytelling and dropped ideas, and lay the groundwork for newly developed characterization and plot points. However, when it gets in the way of writing--of actively moving the story toward wholeness and completion--editing is detrimental to storytelling.
This was an epiphany of sorts for me--a breakthrough. If the old material is holding you back and keeping the story from growing, just put it out of your mind! Ignore it until it's time to edit! The realization that I could do that was freeing.
I hope if anyone else is stuck, this helps you. That's the reason I'm sharing this. It would be far too pretentious to call this "advice", since that implies that I'm an accomplished writer who actually knows what they're doing, and has enough experience to lecture others. God knows I still have no idea what I'm doing. I guess I just want to show the mistakes I made and how I learned from them. How I was able to work my way through them.
I know I have a tendency to beat my head against a wall when I run into it, instead of trying to find a way around it. Sometimes I'm blind to solutions until they bite me in the ass. So if I can get unstuck, you can as well.
Good luck!
Some of you may remember me stating somewhere that I've been working on this story since friggin' seventh grade. I've changed a lot since then (obviously), and as I've grown and become more complex, so has the story. The result?
A great big goddamn mess.
I barely know what's going on in the story now, as it's devolved into a huge mass of tangled plot threads and dropped stitches of failed ideas that I never bothered to clean up. I can never get anything done when I open up the story to work on it--the old material catches my eye, and I groan to myself, start editing, and forget that my objective going in was to actually write some new material.
So I'm just going to start fresh. Screw the old stuff. I'm just going to open a new document, and start writing the story from the point I left off on the old one. I will ignore all the editing that I need to do. The editing itself is not bad--it's necessary to clean up the bad storytelling and dropped ideas, and lay the groundwork for newly developed characterization and plot points. However, when it gets in the way of writing--of actively moving the story toward wholeness and completion--editing is detrimental to storytelling.
This was an epiphany of sorts for me--a breakthrough. If the old material is holding you back and keeping the story from growing, just put it out of your mind! Ignore it until it's time to edit! The realization that I could do that was freeing.
I hope if anyone else is stuck, this helps you. That's the reason I'm sharing this. It would be far too pretentious to call this "advice", since that implies that I'm an accomplished writer who actually knows what they're doing, and has enough experience to lecture others. God knows I still have no idea what I'm doing. I guess I just want to show the mistakes I made and how I learned from them. How I was able to work my way through them.
I know I have a tendency to beat my head against a wall when I run into it, instead of trying to find a way around it. Sometimes I'm blind to solutions until they bite me in the ass. So if I can get unstuck, you can as well.
Good luck!
