Right now my biggest problem writing is just in focusing enough on any one project to just do it! I think i don't have enough mental space to juggle all I've got going, so when I come to a week like this, being able to write at night because my husband is working, I waste an hour of my kids' nap time wondering which article or chapter I feel most interested in! I've got 3 articles in process, but then there's also like 20 manuscripts or queries I should be resending out there. I'm not managing my writing well. I keep putting out new stuff before I've found a home for older things.
Working on my novel is hard this moment because I haven't divorced my mind from other things. Here is where I see the purpose of writing about the book as a daily warm-up to write the book, as Steinbeck did for East of Eden.
I've been thinking about how he says he's planning to put everything he knows in that novel, and I fight the temptation to do the same with mine. After-all, this novel is my first, not the seminal work of a long writing career. And I'm considerably young to be attempting to put everything I know in one novel. Plus, I really need to wrap up a story in less than 1000 pages. but it's always been a struggle to have my novel take on subjects and topics that loom large in my real life. I've been working, by some definition of that word, for seven years on this one novel--even if I don't write a word for a year, the characters remained alive in my head. What happened, obviously, is my concerns 7 years ago were very different than mine now. When I was younger, I outgrew novel attempts long before I could complete them, because of that very phenomenon. But this time, I think what's different is that the story my characters had to tell was finally important enough that it still ached to be told after I passed the stage of my own life that created it. There's a lot of surprise in me that 7 years has not only not led to my lost interest, but that my characters are so real that they are dynamic--and yet, they've also not gone ahead of me. A fact that both frustrates me as well as helps me is that I still don't know the end of their story. I don't know yet where they're going and how each character is going to react to certain future events that I do know will happen. Between the ages of 18 and 24, I evolved so quickly as a person and writer that I couldn't dream of any writing project sustaining my interest this long. And if I am to finish this novel, who knows how many more years in the future it will require of me.
I know enough to resist the temptation to, as Steinbeck say, put everything I know in this novel. But I'm still tempted. For instance, I've given birth twice since I started this story, but I've resisted the temptation to give my young married couple children, just because I had so much to say about the subject. And those who know me well know that organic and non-genetically-modified foods are a primary issue in my life, but I've determined my characters just aren't concerned with that, though I am. It'd be easy to bring it in because it's such a part of me life. But I'm finally letting characters be who they are instead of trying to make them reflect more of me. Though, as Steinbeck mentioned too, of course I'm in the book--you can't excise the writer, even though I can make myself more or less apparently present.
I wonder what friends would say if they read the completed book, about who they think I am in the book. When I started, I think Ginny, one main female character, was perhaps going to be like me. But no, she's really quite different--she's a type A personality, and she's revealed to me recently that cleaning is a stress reliever. That's the kind of girls she is--certainly not me! In some measure, I think every character is a reflection of the writer, to some degree. There is a character I think is really more like me, and i secretly wonder who will guess that, should they ever read the book.
NOW I've got about half an hour to write left. Can i even work on the writing today? I wrote the scene of the demolition in Ginny's house, and this morning I realized I'd written her husband Ash's reaction all wrong. I wrote him getting angry, but now I realize he wouldn't. I think he'd really just laugh and be sparked alive by the impulsiveness Ginny demonstrates. (Though there may be, underlying, some negative emotion evoked in Ash that might linger--to come out when he does something drastic without asking his wife's approval.)
I feel bogged down by the amount of stuff I have written, and trying to place it in proper sequence. I know i need to just keep chipping away, manage a little at a time, and there will be a day I see the plot clearly. But now I'm just confused by so much stuff i've written in different years, trying to figure out what to keep (cuz there's a lot to lose). I wrote the demolition chapter without solving any problems--I just needed to write instead of be paralyzed by questions.
What can i do today? I think i can rewrite Ash's reaction and then try to work in the next chapters, which are already written, adding in how she and Thomas have to fix the big mess they've made (ooh--quite a few layers to that, actually!)
Maybe, for people who read this, I should soon write a brief intro of characters and plot, if I'm to keep mentioning characters...
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