It shrinks, it grows, but at least it doesn’t stay the same

[pjthompson]

The WIP in rewrites was at first losing words at a good rate, and I was pleased about that. Getting rid of excess, making things clean. I actually like rewrites, perverse creature that I am. Structural problems, however, made it necessary for me to add new material and so I’ve written three new scenes and I will be adding more. Deleting and rearranging more, too, but the word count is currently larger than when I started. Not as large as the first bloated draft, but growing. I am not too worried about this. I have to get the structure, story, and character stuff right first, then I can worry about slimming. There will be at least one more draft for hammering that out.

I’m only on chapter 8, though I’ve been at it a month. It’s taking forever because my writing time is so limited these days. The only block of time I can count on is my lunch hour at work Monday through Friday. Weekends are completely absorbed with errands and chores and by evening I’m so trashed all I can do is sit it the chair, drool, and try not to fall asleep. Weeknights are often the same. I feel like I’m having to steal time for the creativity, and I’m hoping that when things regularize, my creative time-space will expand again.

At least I still have words. I was worried for a time that I’d used them all up. Things aren’t as fecund as they used to be, but I still have something.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve told myself bedtime stories: little storylets to help me drift into sleep; sometimes multi-pronged epics that I’ve been telling myself for years, often too silly to actually commit to the page, but fun and comforting all the same. These days, I fall into bed and I’m either immediately asleep or my mind is full of things to do, or worries, or…anything but stories. I can think of only one other period in my life when I didn’t tell myself bedtime stories. It was during that four or five year-long writers’ block I had. As soon as the bedtime stories started again, I began writing again, so there is something fundamental about my process involved in those dreamy tales.

I still have words. I still have words. I must remember that. Some day I may have time again, and I may have hypnogogic yarns to lull me into dreams, and oh yes, I may have dreams again, even dreams that are fit to put on the page.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Comments

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Even if these words aren't a story, they're still pretty.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm doing okay.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yay for you!

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :-D

[marycatelli]

Antiwords are so much harder to generate than words.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Ain't that the truth!

[darkspires.livejournal.com]

I do the bedtime story thing and almost always it turns into a real story. Of course the downside is if it isn't the story I happen to be writing at the time.

I also think that when things settle down and you get a new routine, the writing time will come back. I look forward to then.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Yes, sometimes the bedtime story is the story I'm working on, or a story that has real potential, but if that's the case, I sometimes have to leap out of bed and jot things down. Not conducive to rest. A Rain of Angels started that way, as I was drifting off to sleep. I leaped out of bed to jot something down and jotted down about 17 pages as ideas kept sparking. A long time later I got to bed. Fortunately, I didn't have to get up early the next day. :-)