Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Hangover Squared

After the party comes the hangover.

In the previous post I described how I met a character in my new novel who proved to be a most welcome guest at the party because he brought with him a whole new plot line. In fact, it was the only plot because he appeared in chapter two when I was well and truly stuck for direction.

Well, I've moved on since then - I'm now at the end of chapter three - and, as usual, the doubts have set in. What seemed such a brilliant idea a couple of weeks ago doesn't seem quite so clever now. Part of the problem I guess is that I'm already anticipating the rejection slips that will - if the past is any guide - inevitably come winging back to me like homing pigeons with bird flu when I finish the book and submit it for publication. I don't care how often it happens, when someone rejects the child you've spawned as flawed and imperfect the result is devastating. What kind of parent would look forward to that day?

Because maybe the child is imperfect. There is no way of knowing at this stage. I'm only three chapters in but even when I finish the book I won't really know if it's any good until other people start reading it. Fortunately, it's perfectly possible to delude yourself for three hundred pages. If you didn't you'd probably never finish the damned thing.

The current problem of self-doubt (which I'm sure all writers with the possible exception of Jeffrey Archer experience) is compounded by the way I write. I am an inveterate re-writer. Every day I go back over the previous few pages and start correcting and changing. If I'm lucky after a session I'll have advanced the book by another couple of pages - or more often paragraphs - or, sometimes, disastrously, I'll have less than when I started.

I know this isn't a very clever way to write. It would make far more sense I'm sure to map out a plot in advance, to do lots of research, become familiar with my characters in my head and then simply crash on until I'd completed the first draft. And then do the revision.

But I just can't work that way. So I wade around in a miasma of self-doubt and uncertainty that inevitably leads to disillusion and despair. What seemed so fresh and amusing a couple of weeks ago now seems stale and unoriginal. I'm already sick of the book and I've only written three chapters.

And yet. Sometimes you can hate the things you love most but if it's true love the antipathy is only temporary. One good paragraph can change everything. Right now though, writing one good sentence is a challenge.

Why do I do this to myself? That's easy. Because there is no alternative. Writing is the only thing I do in my life that makes me feel remotely human. And I guess I wouldn't be human if I didn't occasionally feel miserable at my own shortcomings.

11 comments:

  1. No one can teach you how to write - that's something that you make up as you go along. Most would tell you that plotting keeps the words flowing and to some extent I agree but it is the inertia from your imagination that pushes a story forward.
    I therefore suggest some sort of lobotomy to remove that damned editor from your frontal lobe and then you can let the wordies run free!

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  2. Anonymous5:22 pm

    I do know what you mean - I have been busy writing on my alloted span blog for months but amd only about half way through the writing and I hate the stuff I wrote su far..

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  3. Echoing the Minx re no one being able to teach what will work for you. You find your own path.

    My own feeling is that plotting in advance can actually kill the creativity - the only way for me is to WRITE, WRITE and keep WRITING.

    Which means I also agree with Minx about removing that inner editor and just keeping going.

    Right. I'm off now to take my own advice.

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  4. When I finally get to the UK, I think you and I should get together for a self doubt pint or two!

    But you know what I love, reading this - we all go through the same stuff, we all have different ways of writing and yet none of us can stop, we don't even want to stop!

    And I agree with Debi, for me the only way to do it is just sit down and write - the fixing up can all come later.

    Keep at it, Pund. Face it, do you have any other choice. I mean, really?
    :-)

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  5. Anonymous4:37 pm

    Bill,
    Having read A Half Life of One, whatever the process that takes you to the completion of your novel, it is worth it.

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  6. Keep going. I too have faith in you.

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  7. Ah, you're working with the Critic looking over your shoulder. You need to nudge him gently away, give him a glass of whiskey and tell him to come back much, much later on. When you've written it!

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  8. Self-doubt is a killer. It spirals out of control, invades the pores... turns all actual the killer sentences into not quite right ones. At some point the ability to say: 'Sodd off' is needed to be able to move on.

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  11. Once I began the e book the handiest issue I knew turned into that I desired it to be humorous a whole change from by preceding https://www.gethomeworkonline.com/ novel the bleak and downbeat A half of life of it. I quick found that starting up to make some thing humorous is a piece of a downer in itself.

    ReplyDelete