For well over a year I have battled with writing two storylines. I have had writers block, I have written myself into corners, and I have written into parts of the story I never intended the story to go. Sometimes this worked, other times it ruined the whole plot and I have found myself doing more rewrites than I care to admit.
At the end of all this time I am still left with no story.
I have wondered why I am struggling so much. I’ll insert here that I ALWAYS struggle, but this has been so much worse than usual… There are times I have wanted to tear my hair out and scream.
Of course it doesn’t help to write two storylines at the same time. There are probably some authors who can do that, but not me. In my case I would go gung-ho on the one, get frustrated, tuck it away, and concentrate on the other. So technically it wasn’t both at the “same time” but they were both running in my head so still, well, I digress.
So, here I have been struggling with two storylines that I can’t seem to write one OR the other. I decided to walk away from both and totally rethink my ideas. I came up with two new ideas and started playing with them. I eventually tucked them away for future consideration. For some reason I just kept coming back to the first two ideas.
Argh! How discouraged and frustrated I was! I had come to the conclusion that maybe I wasn’t meant to write another story. Okay, that was me having a pity party-- I love to write. But like I said, I was feeling pretty disappointed that I couldn’t get either story right.
There are those whose opinions I highly value. To me, their advice is golden. So I turned to them.
Now, on this blog, I rarely feel qualified to give advice about writing. I am in the company of some of the women I respect and admire most-- both as my friends as well as with their talent of writing and editing, so I feel very inadequate and unqualified to give advice when it comes to writing.
Though I can share my own experiences and what I have learned, I feel that their wisdom can be so much more helpful to anyone out there than what I have to offer as I am still learning the ropes myself and have a LONG way to go.
But in my struggle to figure things out with my dilemma, I love the advice I was given, so I had to share.
It’s something I have always known, something I have been taught from the beginning of writing. In fact, I have been taught it in all aspects of my life for that matter. But in my discouragement, it was a nice reminder and renewed my desire to try again.
Be true to yourself and follow your heart.
With each book I have written, I had a reason for writing it, a purpose I wanted to achieve. It had nothing to do with ‘So and so doesn’t like it that way‘, or ‘What would people think if I wrote it like this instead of like that?’, or ‘What would sell better?’, or whatever other possible scenario can be holding a writer back from going forward… I had a story I wanted to tell and I wrote it the way I wanted to tell it with the message I wanted it to say.
It’s great advice. I plan to step back and rethink my storyline. Notice I didn’t say storylineS. Just one storyline at a time. It’s really all I can handle for now. I’ll get back to writing the way I like to write, telling stories the way I like to tell them. I’ll follow my heart, and write with a reason and a purpose in mind.
If the truth were told I had reason for wanting to write each of the stories in the first place. I want to get back to those reasons and focus more on them.
Who knows? Maybe, just maybe I’ll actually finish writing a story --That’s my goal, anyway. :)
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