It's IWSG time. To read more posts supporting writers, go here.
I haven’t forgotten IWSG, but I came close this month. There’s a good reason for it though. This writer is writing! I’m back in class, a novel-writing workshop through
Grub Street again, and golly gosh…guess what we have to do for that? We write.
Now there’s a novel idea. Ba-da-bing.
Yesterday I was scheduled to read up to five pages to my
peers. And here’s my quandary. I’ve actually finished two drafts of this
novel. I’m working hard on the last
third of draft three where I discovered a real twist to the story, but haven’t
figured out how to resolve it. But when I
am reading this WIP to my class, I have to drop back to earlier bits of the
book. It is too hard for the readers to
give objective criticism to page two hundred fifty, without knowing what
happened on page sixty. So I read from
where they know and then leave at the end of the evening filled with ideas on how to fix those five
pages, which is all good except that it's a complete distraction from what I’m trying to edit toward the
end of the book.
Small price to pay though, for actionable feedback that de-clutters
those five pages and helps the story to sing.
Sometimes I feel like I’m writing forward and backward, and that the
only way I’ll complete this thing is when I meet myself in the middle. But still, I’m writing. And conflicting. And massaging. And nuancing.
And so far I love this story to
death.
For anyone who wants to self-educate, in class, we’re reading Between the
Lines. Master the subtle elements of
fiction writing, by Jessica Page Morrell.
So far, there are lots of yellow highlights in my copy.
