A couple of weeks ago, in February’s ‘Insecure Writers Support Group’ post, I talked about how I’ve fallen out of love with my manuscript recently, which is highly unfortunate considering that it’s only part one in what is supposed to be a four-part series. There’s this swirl of different emotions and feelings about the story wheeling around in my head, driving me near-mad, in fact. On the one hand, I definitely still feel that it’s a viable story that people will enjoy. On the other hand I’ve been technically working on this particular story for years (it has evolved many times and barely resembles the original concept) and I guess maybe I’m just feeling a little bored with it. Back on the first hand, I love the characters and really want their stories to be told, but on the second hand I’ve been having a difficult time keeping the main character in the emotional train-wreck state that she’s meant to be in without making her completely unlikable in the process. And, I guess, at least a little bit of me feels like I have to finish this particular project whether I want to or not, while another little bit of me is longing to do something different without actually knowing what that different is.
So I’ve decided to take the advice of some of the lovely fellow writers who commented on the IWSG post and re-read my story. As we speak I am compiling the manuscript into a readable form and transferring it onto my phone so that I can scroll through it on the bus to and from work, and maybe during my breaks as well.
Maybe by doing this I’ll get back into the characters’ lives, get back into the adventure, and find myself truly wanting to finish the last couple of chapters so that I can ship it off to my beta-reader. Maybe I’ll fall back in love with the story.
At least, I hope so, because if that doesn’t happen, I really don’t know where I’m going to go from there. @_@
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Pretty irritating to feel like that. I can’t say I’ve felt like that yet, though. I hope I don’t. Hope you rekindle that love for your book.
Fingers crossed! It’s definitely quite frustrating. @_@
Good luck with this. Hope it helps.
Thanks! I hope so too!
First, I tried to click “abort conversion”. I’m really not that brain dead, but I tried when this popped up in my reader. I was like WTF and clicked. Second, it’s not easy work writing a novel. It takes time, patience and energy. Two of which I’m lacking too much of to write that much. But I will have enough of them to read it when your done 🙂
Hahahahaha…I can’t really blame you because I did a double – take multiple times while writing this post. lol I really have to stop using screenshots as blog images.
You’re right about the time and energy though, and I’ve got precious little of either. lol
Is writing on the bus on option? I think you said you had a one hour bus ride each way so that would be two hours of writing if you can write on the bus. Not exactly ideal conditions for writing, though.
The hour-each-way ride was actually on my last job; this one is closer to 35 minutes each way. That said, that would still be over an hour of writing, but it’s not really feasible. The roads we’re driving on are little more than raked gravel, and we’re riding a bus, so the vibration is so bad I’d never be able to read anything I hand-wrote afterwards. And I COULD technically bring my laptop and write on that either way, but I don’t really feel comfortable doing that because I have a field job right now, which means that I’d have to leave the laptop in my backpack and be away from it for 10 hours of the 12-hour shift. ._.
Ahh I forgot you were on a bone shaker. That would be miserable for reading, writing, and typing. I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving a laptop for that long either!
No, it’s definitely not an ideal situation. I used to be able to write a bit during the day when I was a DCS tech, but I’ve been out in the field for quite a while now so the best I can do is scribble in a notebook throughout the day and transcribe later.