Writing tip 5 - Stick with the process

 

It's a roller coaster ride, isn't it? When you're at the bottom looking up at that mountain, you never think your vehicle is going to make it. As you're struggling to the top, there are so many groans and clanks, that you wonder if the brakes will hold, or whether you'll slip right back down the valley. Then just when you'd all but given up you find yourself at the top with just a few seconds to take in the magnificent view before you're flying, and... enough already with that!

The thing is, the more ambitious the project (and that doesn't always relate to size) the more there will be these times of desperation and euphoria, interspersed with a fair bit of ho-hum along the way. Creative communication is a battle with the self.

Above all, persist. Persist in good times and in bad, because sometimes it is when the problems seem insurmountable that you really start to come up with some really interesting solutions.

Of course, there are times when you need to put the thing aside for a while - just walk away from it for a day or two, or a month or two (a year? Or two?) - and then come back and start working at it again. Come in from a new angle. Start a new scene or chapter. Cut yourself some slack.

If it is supposed to take a minimum of 10,000 hours of working at something to become an expert, then with writing the great continental or national novel, the great Australian, American, African, Indian, Chinese, European, New-Guinean, Russian, Lithuanian ... novel, it is bound to take more than a lick and a polish.

How many drafts? As many as it takes. The more experienced a writer you are, I believe the more drafts you will write. Too many sometimes, probably, but that doesn't start to happen until about the twentieth!

So persist for longer than you think you should have to. And then, at a certain point, stop persisting and move on to the next thing.

Think of it this way - even if a particular project doesn't work out as you would have wished, you will have learnt a massive amount (which, even if nothing else, will be invaluable for your opus magnum). Or think of it this way, the more you hone your work, the better it becomes and the better your chances of having it read and enjoyed.

Writing prompt

Write a new scene for your current project - a day in the life of ... a character that you have developed the least. You don't have to use it, but write it as an exploration and a way of gaining some new insights into this character.