And the Grind Goes On ...

Oh my! We have all survived the Holidays and now that we are in the frozen depths of January, I am trying to grind out the rest of the manuscript that I had a great start with in November. It's not that I am not writing the story, it's that I am not putting it down in writing! My head continues to write the story. My mind is constantly grabbing snippets of dialogue and prose I could use to explain each character's actions. I argue with myself how I should continue the story. I come up with all sorts of ways to advance the story to the end point - but somehow none of it gets down on the paper or the computer! I fully intend to do that, but it just doesn't seem to translate from my head, to the fingers, to the computer, or even to my trusty journal! Sigh! Even doing this Blog is like a method of putting off doing those last few chapters.

I wonder if my reluctance to commit the story to the written word is because I don't want to let go of these characters. I know that I certainly want to do justice to them. I want the best outcome I can for these sweet characters that I have dragged through trials and tribulations over the pages I have written so far. I think there is a natural fear that when I finish the story I will not have  given the reader the best and most accurate window into these souls that have occupied my mind for a long, long, time (Long before I even put pen to paper in fact). But then I think, there is always the editing to come and the Beta readers to boost me along the road to that perfect picture I want to paint for my readers. I can continue the development of the characters once I have committed to the complete story.

Writing is not just about the ideas, the composition of the story or the characters though. The art of writing is in fact the struggle to put one word past the other on paper, or computer screen. The art of writing is disciplining yourself to stop playing Solitaire on the computer and instead open up the working document and start typing one word after the other. Writing is about making those transient thoughts that explode in your brain be tamed enough to translate through your fingers down to the paper and make some sense in the interim.  I guess it's about time I did that, so for now I bid goodbye. Wish me luck in the taming of my thoughts!
Marie