Today I decided to read the so-called first draft of the novel I am working on. After a few hours I became very antsy and fled to a Starbucks in Palmdale, where I made this attempt at an artsy sunset shot. (What's going on up there lately?)
I spent another hour and a half letting my coffee go cold (dang, should have brought that tea light with me) and my blood cooled right along with it.
If you write, you have had this day. The one when you can't see for the life of you how you could have spent all this time working on this project that suddenly looks absolutely hollow.
I have a plot, I swear I do. It's in there somewhere, and there's more in my outline--what did I do with that? But it's also a lot of scenery and conversations.
Oh my god, it's like I've turned Death Valley (the setting of the novel) into one gigantic coffee house!
3 comments:
Uh-oh. I'm only on Chapter 2 of my first attempt. This news does not cheer me.
Although the concept (gigantic Death Valley coffeehouse) could be cool, even if it wasn't what you were going for.
Ha! No, don't let it be distressing. I think it's bound to happen to most writers and knowing that it's something you just work through might help!
So not what I was going for. But hey....
I wandered over here from 43T and enjoyed reading your post. I'm mostly a poet & one reason I think I've been afraid to really start on a novel project (which I want to do) is this:
One of my greatest poetry teachers answered the question, "How do I really know if a poem is any good?" with the reply, "Well, Buddhists believe the corpse of a bodhisattva doesn't stink but smells like violets. Put the poem away, wait, then go back to it later & read it again. It will either stink or smell like violets."
By this measure, the goodness or badness of at least 74% of my work depends on my mood when I read it. (25% tends to get unequivocally trashed, 1% always smells like violets no matter what the day is, but the rest? who knows? Will it embarrass me later if published? Judging by experience, yes! Should I just throw away the 74% I'm not sure of? Good question! ...
(Familiar?) Anyway, good luck with Death Valley. (I must say, if I found myself in Death Valley, I'd probably be looking for a coffee house, too, if only to buy a bottle of Smart water.)
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