This is Hard

I’m working third shift this weekend, which usually means plenty of time for writing. The only problem is that nothing’s happening. It’s been so long since I worked on my book that I can’t find the voice. I have a few poorly written lines of a scene. I know, in general, what is supposed to happen during the rest of the scene. I should just pound it out and not worry about how it’s written for now; just get the scene down and worry about editing it later.

But I can’t. I hate leaving a sentence before it sounds exactly how I want it to. I sometimes spend an hour or more on a single paragraph if is doesn’t sound quite right. I don’t believe in “rough drafts”. I took Research and Exposition in high school, which was all about writing research papers. We were required to fill out index cards and make outlines and write a rough draft before we could write the actual paper. I wrote the paper first and then went back and cobbled together all the crap they wanted me to waste my time with.

It just seems like such a large amount of effort to go back over something I’ve already written and rewrite it. Why not just write it the way I want it the first time? This is why, back when I was taking part in the online writing workshop, I posted one chapter in the time that most of the other writers had posted three. By the time I finished the now-defunct The Price of Power (75k words), Tammy had written the original version of Ghosts in the Snow (250k) and the original sequel (100+k) and was halfway through with Threads of Malice (120ish k, coming this fall to a bookstore near you!). We started our current projects at approximately the same time. She’s at 75k, a little over a month from completion. I’m at 43k, 30k of which is previously written stuff.

Of course, it’s not really fair to compare myself to Tammy. She’s an author; I’m just a writer, and (as previously noted) a casual one at that. And my lack of productivity has much more to do with the fact that I haven’t tried to write anything in three months than my obsession with writing my sentences just the way I want them.

Still, when I am writing, I seldom manage great numbers of words in a day. But hopefully the time I take is made back when it comes time to edit; if I did my job right the first time, very little editing will need to be done.