I need new copper plumbing
Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 7:40 PM
Writer's Cramp in on writing, process, word count, writer's block

I’ve spent the better part of the weekend working on Book 2*. I have about 60 pages so far, about half of which is the first four(ish) consecutive chapters, the rest being scenes or snippets of scenes that will/probably/might appear later on, depending.

And I realized in the last hour or so that I need to completely scrap most of what I wrote this weekend because I’m headed in the wrong direction from where I want to be in the story.

Sigh.

This is part of the process. When you’re struggling to get everything on the page, you have to push, push, push to keep at it, knowing the whole time that everything you’re pushing to put on that page is going to be utter crap. Well, perhaps not crap, but not something that you’ll keep. It’s like running water to clear rusty pipes:  it’s undrinkable until it runs clear, but you have to run the water nonetheless.

 

*An unfortunately large proportion of which was actually time spent being delinquent from writing, because the internet is evil and enticing and riddled with temptation.

Article originally appeared on B. Jenne' Hall: writing and other pursuits (http://www.bjennehall.com/).
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