Thursday, September 26, 2013

Fresh and Distant

I'll try and be brief. I thought I'd come a long way with my current work in progress. Twenty thousand words in, I thought I was making pretty decent headway. Except I stopped a while back. Which, especially now, becomes a problem. Not even just a little problem, but a big, work-halting problem. 

It's not just a traditional case of writer's block. It's more of a reflective disappointment on my work since I'm no longer particularly close to it. Common advice dolled out is something like, "After you finish your first draft, put it away for a month or so and work on something else." This allows a fresh, distant perspective on the writing. Then you can cut, edit, and rewrite to your heart's content. 
 
There's another facet of that, come to find out. Just so happens that if, for some reason, you take a lengthy break from writing said project (as you would were it a complete first draft), you will experience that same "fresh" and "distant" perspective on your writing. Which is okay if you want to edit and rewrite it. 
 
Not if you want to finish it.

Even just a quick skim over the past couple of pages to remember where I had stopped brings with it an enormous amount of inconsistencies, grammatical issues, and other problems. And as I try and continue, I can't help but reminisce in these problems within my story-to-be. There's nothing I can do to get around it, either. Trying to forge ahead despite this is not an option; it feels wrong, like I'm slowly destroying what love I had for this story to begin with. (I still maintain that love, but I know I'll need to begin fresh with it to again bring it proper justice.)
 
So I propose this: Any project that I set out to finish, I will finish without undue and/or unnecessarily lengthy breaks of time. That way the "fresh, distant" view of my own story can be utilized to its proper capacity.