Well, here we are on the second day of my self imposed challenge. And I can honestly say this is going to be more challenging than I thought. For part of yesterday, old instincts kicked in, trying to tell me to abandon this project, rationalizing it with all kinds of ideas that I could write instead, or ideas on what I should do to rewrite the project. I won't go into specifics - they're not important - but all of those suggestions sounded perfectly rational and logical. But I just want to ramble for a bit about what happened on that first day.
I had all kinds of second thoughts about what I was doing. But I turned them all down. I loaded Microsoft Word, ranted privately and came out feeling more resolute than ever. And I didn't back down. If anything, I jumped into it and scribbled out most of the second chapter and, once I'm done with this blog, I'm going to jump back into it again, doing another rant on Word if I feel all these doubts creeping up on me again.
See, doing this is forcing myself to change the way I think - don't constantly change the project. Don't give it up whenever you get discouraged by the way its turning out. Don't switch projects. I also feel that I have to clarify one of my rules.
I can't rewrite as I go. Yesterday, I ended up reworking the same paragraph multiple times because I was indecisive about what the plot was. It delayed progress - either one of the options would have worked. So my rule about not rewriting paragraphs? That applies to in-progress chapters as much as it does finished ones.
So the challenge continues. There's going to be more road-blocks on the way. I'm going to get through them all. I'm going to finish this draft, dang it.
That is all for now. I may do another blog entry tomorrow.
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