I’m sure this isn’t the best advice…
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aren’t we supposed to believe that we can? It rarely happens though, does it?
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My brain is very limited – so I do the process of drafts for each scene separately. I get down what I see in my head, with the words that come first.
Then I add from the prompts and lists I fill in BEFORE I start to write. Rounds of listening, going through AutoCrit and using the information from its counting functions to decide if I need to have ‘see’ eight times in this scene; repeat – and eventually is has incorporated everything I want, the language is as polished as I like, and that scene is completely finished. Next!
Lawrence Block messed me up by saying he could do his stories in the first draft – I thought back when I started that you had to do that.
I won’t comment on his books, but each writer has to find the process that works for them, and his is not mine.
this sounds like a good plan, Alicia… something I will probably be doing soon, as the constant pain doesn’t leave much room for thinking (or remembering!)
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You do what you can with the pain, and then if you still have some time, find methods which give you the reward of moving forward with what matters to you – or it takes that from you, too.
I frankly don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not at least in principle trying to finish Pride’s Children: LIMBO. Yesterday, words came; today follows another night of struggling unsuccessfully to get enough sleep – I’ll try again in a while, and I’ll TRY writing (by blocking the internet with a little program called FREEDOM I have a lifetime subscription to the primitive form of) – and will count the effort, and any progress as success. Otherwise, who am I?
Unless you are using your time effectively to take care of yourself, yes, trying counts – you keep trying until you either succeed, or decide it isn’t going to be possible.
Being sensible IS a strategy.
I just don’t know if I will accept that I can’t when I can’t. But so far, trying eventually produces a bit more, and I keep at it.
being stubborn seems to help, I find…
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If there were a competition for stubbornness, I’d like to be in it.
People have choices, and have a hard time making one thing more important than another, and sharing time.
I have writing LIMBO – and almost literally nothing else. If you want to call that being stubborn, even with its hint of desperation, I’m on board for that.
There’s nothing else, given the current state of research into ME/CFS and Long Covid, that I have to look forward to and count on.
Meanwhile, I’m going to finish the book if I have ANY way of continuing.
Then I can pin all my hopes on marketing a completed trilogy, etc.. Hard to market something not finished, unless you can make even an implicit promise it will be finished.
Hope your ‘something’ sustains you, too.
Practically everything is sitting on the edge of the toilet seat waiting to fall in, but I still believe I can keep going! so I am extremely grateful for this…
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You sound like the kind of optimist I am – even when things are horrid, you keep going, not because it could be worse (that’s always true), but because if we still have any choices, we can make good satisfying ones, even of little things.
I can’t take credit for it – it seems to be hardwired to try to put myself back together every day – but I am very grateful for it, or I’d spend my entire remaining life focusing on all the bad stuff.
I’m just saying… meow! 🐈⬛
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Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes 
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