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Sunday, August 25, 2013

Books I Want to Write

There are two books that I really want to begin writing.  They are very different from one another.  One is set in the future.  One is set in the past. I am having trouble deciding which to start, even though at the same time I am loving not having started either.

I love the part before you begin a tale--like standing on the edge of a cliff in terror.  But you've strapped some wings to yourself and you are pretty sure they are going to work.  Yeah.  They will work.  That cocky confidence mixed with utter fear--that is the best feeling.

That sense of  not knowing mixed with an intense desire to discover pretty much sums up what I love about writing.

So, here I stand on this precipice. Waiting.

I should just start.  I know it.  But see, I've spent the summer rewriting one thing and revising another and anyone who tells you that rewriting and revising are easy are either lying or crazy or both.  To revise (or rewrite) well you have to get out of your own head, which is hard for a writer because WE ALL STAY IN OUR OWN HEADS a lot.  It is hard work.  Hard.

And one day I took a little break from it all and wrote a picture book which pretty much stayed exactly the same from first draft to last.  In other words, it came out right the first time. I know I was lucky and it was a gift, because it just doesn't really happen that way usually, and MAN OH MAN did I ever need it.

I needed to remember the ease of writing.

And now it is midnight and I have lost the thread of this post. Ironic, considering that is  exactly what I fear when I am on that edge that I spoke of--the loss of the story early on, or worse, the inability to take the idea and find the story within it at all.  The feeling that the idea, while amazing, is still too nebulous to become a story, and all of the coaxing in the world will not summon it.

It is sometimes much more fun to dream about the quest than to pack the bag, get on the safari jeep, and just go.

Soon.

hrh

4 comments:

Rebecca Gomez said...

I've been there. But pick one and get on with it!

Jessica Lawson said...

"More fun to dream about the quest"...ah, too true. I've got one WIP in mind and I keep finding ways to avoid actually writing it. I think I'm afraid. I'm afraid of the gap between the not-so-concrete, but delicious idea in my head, and my writing abilities. So I procrastinate.

Myrna Foster said...

Did you already sell the picture book?

Hopefully one of the stories will pull you in pretty soon.

Jessie Oliveros said...

My ideas morph so much from conception to the final product. And I'm not sure I like that. I want it to stay in its perfect form, what it is before I get to it. Maybe you can write both until one takes over the other. I did that once...