Friday Forays in Fiction: Cooling Off Period

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Since Monday morning I've been reading a lot of fiction. Not so much (or at all) writing it. Though I haven't really stopped thinking about it, I haven't touched my WIP files since I uploaded my words to the NaNo verifier Monday afternoon. For the last few days I've been feeling an intense revulsion at the thought of looking at the mess I made. I decided it was best to not look. For now. A part of me would just as soon put the real file through the scrambler as ever look at it again.

So I'm keeping my didstance to gain some distance. But I don't want to wait too long and let the embers cool to the point the spark can't be lit again. It's tempting to wait until after the holidays but I know that would be long enough to make getting revved up again difficult, besides I have a 2-3 week trip to my Mom's planned for the first of the year and I mustn't wait until I get home and get settled here again.

My plan is to dip back in on Monday. One week isn't long enough to gain objective distance though so I'm imposing the rule that I can't delete anything done during NaNo until March. That doesn't mean I can't rewrite sentences, paragraphs, pages etc only that I do those rewrites in a separate place or in such a way that preserves the NaNo version such as in parenthesis or a different color font. Anyway, what I have in mind isn't as ambitious as rewriting. I'm itching to collect the new data--character info, time line, family trees, scene lists, and such and get it recorded in the FOS worksheets file.

I'm also itching to keep writing. I could have kept on going Friday afternoon. I was prepared to keep on going. I expected to have to keep on going until near midnight. I only put my file through the NaNo verifier at noon to see how far behind I still was. I was surprised to find that I'd already crossed the finish line. Once that surprise wore off though I allowed the lurking exhaustion to pounce.

I do think I did the right thing by taking a break but I also know from past experience that taking a break can take on its own life and keep on justifying itself day after day after week after month. So this year I'm setting the limit of one week and then I'm getting back to work. And I'm going to keep on working throughout the year regardless of what other things are going on. Not at the NaNo pace. Far from it. But it is vital to stay involved in the story world and in the WIP files. And in the daily forming of words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into pages.

Meanwhile I've used this break to feed my muse with daydreaming, the reading of fiction, the making of crocheted bookmarks and watching 2 to 6 episodes of Gilmore Girls per day. That last is because Ed and I are watching the series through together and it's what he wants to do with our evenings between dinner and sleep on the days he works and the afternoons on his days off. Since part of the fun of this time through for me is watching him react to his first encounter with each episode, I hate the thought of him continuing without me while I'm in Longview and he hates the thought of waiting for two or three weeks to see what happens next. So because of that we're pushing a bit harder than we otherwise would.

We started in late October are now on disc 3 of 6th season so have 30 some episodes to go. This has been good for the story maker in me as it is compressing the seven seasons more than they ever have been for me before. And because I've seen all the way to the end and all but season 7 multiple times before, I'm able to watch as an apprentice story teller at the feet of a master--seeing the story whole and its parts in relation to the all.