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Don't quit

Perseverance vs Stubbornness

May 30, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake

When does perseverance become stubbornness?

Said another way, when is sticking with an endeavor the wrong thing to do?

This is a tough question, but also an important one.

Many times, I feel like if things are too hard, we as a society quit. That if something doesn’t come to us right away, there are so many other things to distract us that we don’t have to fight for it.

Success

But some of us don’t know when to let go. Facebook has proven that to me.

There has to be a middle ground.

When I was in high school, I loved tennis. It was a fast sport, kept my attention as I chased the fuzzy yellow ball, and involved no physical contact. But I understood even then that no matter how many hours I put into the sport (and I put in quite a lot), I would never be as good as the best player on our team. In her freshman year, she was already #1 on the varsity team and ranked in the top players in the state.

I didn’t have the raw talent she did, and even with hours and hours of practice every day, I knew I’d never get a college scholarship playing tennis, much less go pro.

Perseverance2

I knew enough to let tennis go and focus on my studies. Not always an easy choice, particulatly with the emphasis on sports in high school, but the right one.

I faced a similar issue with deciding between perseverance and stubbornness on a story I recently started.

I’d based it loosely on Romeo and Juliet…

Except it was two kingdoms instead of two families

And Romeo was a responsible and war-hardened prince

And there was going to be a happily-ever-after.

Okay, so nothing like Romeo and Juliet.

RomeoJulietNotRomance.png
Still not sure why people think it is a romance.

I had characters in mind for the story and a rough idea of what would happen. This is normal for my pantser self. But more than that, my muse wasn’t just sitting on my shoulder, she was screaming in my ear.

The words flowed until somewhere around the five-thousand word mark, and then my muse turned silent. I plodded along a little more, then I went back and reread my work.

My war-hardened prince was distant and unresponsive.

My heroine waffled between the demure personality I had envisioned and the strong-willed woman she wanted to be.

My external-to-the-romance plot was held together with paperclips and sticky notes.

Yeah, it was a hot mess.

And I didn’t want to edit it. I didn’t want to fix it. And I was only 5,000 words in.

My thoughts kept drifting to the heroine’s older brother, thinking maybe I should tell his story first and come back to her.

This time, rather than jumping into the story, I mulled over his character. How his kingdom fits into my larger world. What the ramifications are of having been a pocket kingdom beholden to an undead abomination. How much the royal family would sacrifice to protect their people.

It helped me create a solid character.

CharactersPlot
Never really had a plot to begin with

His love interest started to take shape at that point. I tried several different characters, until I found one that worked.

As I’m still working through edits on other stories and not ready to start a new novel, I decided to take my new characters on role-playing test drives. Basically, bouncing them through different “what-ifs” to see how they work together.

In each different scenario, I had to do something to “break” the hero to get through the layers of propriety, duty, and honor that defines him.

But it defines him. I can’t break that and have still be him.

After four or five different scenarios, I finally came up with one I think works. Yes, it removes three characters I had thought were essential. (hint: they weren’t).

But it lets the hero be the man he is all the way through the story. No need to “break” who he is to get him to fall in love. And that feels right.

Now, to find the time to write this…

What this taught me was persistence is important, but so is knowing when to let go and try something else. I haven’t given up on my hero, but I did let myself give up on various things that didn’t work to find the one I think will give me the best story.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: Don't quit, Facebook, Happily-ever-after, Hero, heroine, Pantser, perseverance, plot, prince, Romance, stubborn, talent, tennis, War

Shutting Up the Doubt-Demon

December 2, 2016 by Elizabeth Drake

I’ve been struggling through this revision, and after over 6 weeks, I am approximately 40% done with it.

Yeah, I know, I’ve written most of a book in that time. This isn’t the first time I’ve rewritten this story. What is taking so long?

Other than the personal challenges we’ve been facing, the rewrite itself has been very challenging. Changing the point-of-view has been much harder than I thought, especially in the steamy scenes. These are some of the hardest for me to write, so having to tear them all apart and redo them from the ground up is extremely difficult.

Worse than that, however, is the crippling self-doubt.

doubt3

The doubt struck me out of nowhere, sucker punching me when I wasn’t expecting it. As I was reading through a chapter the other night, it dawned on me how absolutely awful this story is. How there’s no market for it, and even if there were, there’s nothing special about what I’ve written.

Not sure if that’s true, or if it’s the crippling self-doubt phase of writing. This phase seems to be quite common among writers, but it also seems to bleed into other endeavors.

doubt4

I follow a blogger who is working toward completing her first ironman. She struggles with doubt after most of her workouts. Yet, I’ve watched her make amazing progress. She admits her times are improving even if the workouts still suck.

But that’s something as a writer I don’t have: the ability to measure progress against an impartial metric. Did I run 3 miles in an hour? Thirty minutes? Fifteen minutes? Sure, I can tell you how many words I have on the page, but it’s not the same. 85,000 awesome words looks the same as 85,000 words that are more like brain vomit than storytelling.

I am trying to keep perspective. I don’t want this guy coming back and sabotaging the progress I have made.

Demon

I started writing in earnest my freshman year of college. After six years of writing and getting nowhere with it, I put writing aside for several years, came back to it briefly, and shelved it again. My doubt-demon kept winning.

Granted, this work was really awful. Or, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know because my doubt-demon devoured it, and it’s gone forever.

So, no, this isn’t my last rewrite on this novel. Yes, it’s going to take at least one or two  more solid rewrites before this thing is ready for me to query.

That’s okay.

Plenty of crummy novels have been published, some have gone on to be bestsellers. Maybe mine will be crummy, too, but I can’t let the doubt-demon win again. Writing is something I’ve been working on over half my life. It’s time the doubt-demon shuts up, sits down, and lets me get this done.

Now, if only I can make him listen.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Don't quit, Doubt, rewriting, Self-Doubt

Road Block

January 20, 2016 by Elizabeth Drake

I have been working on a manuscript for over a year. I took a break from it when I hit around 45,000 and started another book. I finished that book, revised it, and turned back to the 45,000 words.

Those words stared at me for a few days. Then I scrapped them and started over.

I  am now at the 25,000 word mark and again wondering if I should start something else.

But I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to quit. That’s not who I am.

Time to analyze.

Thinking through the issues the past few weeks has helped me hone in on where my trouble is.

  • The manuscript in question is a romance novel and the male lead is someone I wouldn’t like in real life. At least, not at the beginning of his character arc. Maybe even not at the end. But he is interesting.
  • The heroine is “nice”, and in my world, that has meant someone who tends to be a victim. But she isn’t, and I can’t let myself write her that way.
  • The hero has to be kept out of his center of power or the story ends. I had foolishly planned much of the story to happen after her returned to his center of power.

I am not sure I want to give up yet. This is a story I want to tell or I wouldn’t have invested so much into it.

I can’t change the hero’s basic ruthlessness or he’s no longer the hero. I can’t make the heroine less of a kind person, or I rob her of an innate part of herself.

So, I have to revamp where I think the story is going and stretch my writing muscle to get there. Being true to both characters the whole time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Don't quit, Manuscript, Persistance, Romance, Writing, Writing help

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