I find myself going back and forth. When I have a rough writing day, I wonder what the hell I am doing trying to write a book. When the words flow and everything "clicks," everything seems possible and within reach. Sometimes these feelings follow quickly on the heels of the other. It feels a bit bi-polar.
I think that the book is affecting me more than I initially realized. Last night I kept dreaming that I was trying to make it up this hill. At first I was on a bicycle trying to pedal up the steep incline and failing miserably. So, being a clever girl, I ditched the bike and tried to proceed on foot. However, gnarly trees then erupted from the earth, their branches thick and knotted, intertwining and barring my passage.
 |
| My tangle of trees. |
As I struggled to claw my way through the tangled limbs, I kept hoping that someone would come and meet me half-way. Perhaps offer assistance. No one did.
Maybe that is why I am documenting this--to see if anyone will meet me half-way. Or perhaps it is so someone traveling behind me might avoid some of the snares that I encounter...maybe I am meant to be the one to stop along the way, retrace my steps, and venture back to meet another traveller.
What a perfect image of tangled roots for the tangled parts of your dreams and story. I get stuck in the tangles all the time. (I've been in "that part" of the book for too long now.)
ReplyDeleteIt's not easy being a writer and it's easy to get demoralised, but you know, just know when you have to write, never mind what anyone else thinks. Good luck dancing over tangled roots.
ReplyDeletex Linda
I am slowly, and painfully, learning that to write you must have an inordinate about of confidence in the bits and pieces that you have rattling around in your head.
ReplyDeleteYou have to believe not only in characters and the story, but in your ability to bring them all to life. People say that doctors have a God Complex, but certainly writers must have a bit of one as well. We take ideas and give them names and personalities, we move them around and nudge them along. It is more than giving birth to something...at least your children talk back and develop their own ideas and opinions. We control them (although, admittedly, my characters have been known to surprise me at times!), and we watch them from this side of the page. Some of them meet untimely ends, and we mourn them...but they stay with us.
Yes, I am gaining confidence as I go. I believe in the story and the characters. Even when others roll their eyes. Even when people hear that I am writing a book and reply, "Oh, that sounds like...fun..." I still believe. I have to. If I don't believe in these wonderful, eccentric, maddening characters I have created, no one else will ever meet them. And I desperately hope those that stop by here stay around long enough to meeting them...
At the risk of "dating" myself, I now realize that the dream I had the other night has caused the Kate Bush song "Running Up That Hill" to embed itself in my brain. I have to go listen to it and try to exorcise it now.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl9OKddQBRg