Bad analogies and a sense of accomplishment!

Writing a novel, novella or short story is always a different experience. Sometimes it’s more challenging than others. Time for some bad analogies! Occasionally you find yourself drowning in an overflowing sea of ideas. Unsure of how to piece them all together it takes awhile to sort out. Other times it’s a nice leisurely ride down a calm river on a warm summer day and everything just falls into place. More often than not it’s a bit of something in between like a nice day out fishing on the ocean. You know there are a lot of fish but the swells are big and you’re having a hard time keeping your balance until you can find a rhythm. When you finally do find your rhythm you’re surprised by how much easier it is to fish and by what you’re catching. (I have no idea what is up with the water references, sorry! I think I may need to spend some quality outdoor time ice-fishing.)

I don’t care who the writer is. How long they’ve been doing it, I can’t imagine there isn’t a great sense of accomplishment when a project gets finished. That sense of accomplishment may vary with each project, but it is always there. I know I would be disappointed in myself and probably re-evaluate my reasons for writing if I didn’t.

This time around with my new Novel Normal I found myself in the first scenario. Going in I had a good general idea of what I wanted to do and where to go. Even to the point of writing out an entire plot summary (Which I rarely do, most of the time a rough outline suffices.) It went smooth at first and then ideas started raining down on me faster than I could sort them out. Some were incorporated into the story right away, others were discarded as not serving the story and some were piled in a- this could work, but we’ll have to see how it goes pile.

What ended up happening was something I didn’t expect. The story changed in the most wonderful of ways. While it was a challenge and frustrating trying to figure out everything I’m glad I went against my own personal judgment and went off the beaten path instead of following the outline I had told myself I was going to stick to. As I typed the final paragraph the sense of accomplishment I felt was one of the biggest I have felt yet as a writer. I was proud of myself for not putting this story aside, for working through the difficult parts and turning what was a good story into what I feel is a great one.

Only time will tell if you the readers feel the same way (I hope you do), but I know I will always feel a huge sense of accomplishment with this novel. So for the next feel days I am going to ride the high of that sense of accomplishment and take a few days to let my brain reset. Next week I’ll be back at the keyboard again working on the other novel I started this fall. I’ll pound away at that until it’s time to start editing Normal. I know I am interested to see how I feel when it’s time to start the process of whittling things down and making any changes that need to be made.

Until then, thanks for listening to my ramblings, supporting my writing and taking the time to keep up with what is going on in my world. Be sure to stop by and say hi on any of my pages and let me know what you think about the post.

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