
Ideas are a weird thing. Sometimes they come to you from no where, and they seem like the most amazing thing you've ever thought. Sometimes they come from mashing two previous ideas together to create a weird amalgamation of a thought. Sometimes they don't come at all, and you sit and think and struggle with yourself trying to force once to happen. Generally, those are the worst of the bunch, but they're still ideas.
Right now, my idea well is both dry and overflowing, and I don't know how to handle it.
Bound to Parish is coming along. I'm over halfway through the rewrite, I'm making plans for the editor that I'm looking into using for this one, I'm thinking of cover ideas, I'm trying to plan out the release. The problem is, I'm struggling to write the damn thing. Being a discovery writer, the joy and fun for me is going through the story and finding how things fit together. The small piece I write in chapter 3 comes into play in a big way in chapter 33, and that's amazing. The corner that I wrote myself into get broken open by a new and unthought of idea that comes to me in the middle of the night. The hero evolves into something beyond what I thought they would be originally.
But this second draft is taking the fun out of it for me. I'm losing the groove.
Don't get me wrong, I still love the story. I adore the vibe. It's a feeling piece for me, and the feeling is exactly what I want it to be. The problem is the actual plot. I've planned and researched and thought out the entire story a few times now, and I know what I need to write to get to the end, but I find myself getting lost in the details, spending time in scenes that I feel like I need but at the same time feel pointless. I want the action to happen, but I want the backstory to build to it. I want the excitement of finding the story as I go along, and instead I keep coming across it in waves. I blitz through three chapters because I'm interested, and then I lose interest and barely write one. It's...frustrating.
I keep telling myself that I'll be hiring an editor this time, and they can help me tighten it and polish it and make it exciting, but at the same time I feel like the passion for the story has drained from my words. It upsets me, because I still enjoy the story and the theme and the plot, and I want to do it justice but I feel like I'm missing the mark. I don't like feeling like I'm failing the story.
It'll get there, I just need to trust the process. Let the words come as they will, and get through it. Problems can get fixed when the draft is done. Besides, in a week I'll be excited about the process again. The rollercoaster of creativity.
In other news, I watched "The Fall of the House of Usher" over the weekend and...boy. I loved it! I love most Mike Flannigan shows, but it was really well done, and they touched on all of the classic Poe stories that I love. Now I have a massive urge to read through some of his works again - it's been years - and I also have a massive urge to write a ghost story or something. With fall in the air and the chill on the wind, the spooky vibes have taken over and I'm craving a good scary story. I think that's another reason that I'm losing the vibe of this novel, it's a summer time story and the summertime vibe is gone so it's hard to put myself in that headspace again.
We'll get through it, like we always do. Just gotta follow the path.
-Dave
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