I have gone from the euphoric high of new characters and fresh beginnings to the slog.
So I decided to procrastinate do some research, and curl up with a couple of good books.
Which may have made the situation I’m currently in with this WIP worse as now I am yelling at myself not to compare my first draft with a New York Times best-selling author’s final finished product.
I know this. Mentally. But the reptile brain is less easily convinced by reason.
And it doesn’t help that my characters are not behaving. They are not doing what my notes said they should do. The hero is not at all what I thought he would be like. He’s a dark and powerful mage that…likes puppies and kittens?!?
Wait, what?!?
Leikar, you are supposed to…never mind. You do you, and let’s see if that gives us a story.
And this is what happens in the middle of my stories. My characters are off doing things they weren’t supposed to do until later in the story. Acing in ways I’d never intended.
I have to slog through it and find my way to the end.
Usually, writing the ending is much more like writing the beginning. At that point, the characters have tossed my ideas aside and just run toward their own ending.
But, I have to get to where they are taking me.
Let them show me the path even though its not the path I chose.
So, yes, the writing is going much slower. I am in the soft morass of the middle where things happen that I know I’m going to have to go back and add foreshadowing for in earlier chapters. Where I know a ton of things are going to need to be tidied and cleaned up.
But that’s for later.
The middle is where I most need to silence the internal editor as every word is a struggle to get on the page anyway. The last thing I need to do is quiet the ideas that are coming because I started three sentences in a row with the same word.
Still, I am getting there. Perhaps in another few weeks, I will have another completed first draft.
To add to my pile.
I need to figure out how to edit faster. But that will wait until I get through this journey.
First, Leikar has to show me how he’s going to get out of the mess that found him.
*evil author laugh*