Friday, May 25, 2012

Friday Forays in Fiction: Reveling in Rough Drafts


I just want to make a quick observation and then get back to working in my files.  I think I've been making gorgons out of gerbils with my fear of the messes I make of my fiction files during the early draft stages--especially when working under time pressure as with NaNo and other challenges.

That fear comes in two flavors the first being in anticipation of a mess not yet made which has the effect of squelching the inspiration or the inclination to write new words and the second being in hindsight over the words already written in both drafts and notes which tends to exaggerate the extent of the 'mess' and always creates a foaming dismay at the thought of opening those files to face the mess.

And then there is that taskmaster part of me that always insists that the messes must be dealt with before any new word can be added which muffles and manacles the muse.

Well as I have been working with my files for ROW80 I have had more than one occasion when the muse created something new out of  concepts that were juxtaposed in the files precisely because of the 'mess'.  Only someone who knew my storyworld well would understand if I tried to explain any of the particulars so I won't even try.  It is not the point anyway.

The point is that I need to defang the mess monster.  I need to re-vision the very concept of 'mess' to mean something that is less like what a mother means when the kids track in the mud and more like what an artist sees when mixing colors on their paint palettes.

1 tell me a story:

Jamie 5/28/2012 12:57 AM  

Your fears sound a lot like my fears of facing another surgery. I've experience the bad experience and I have experience the good experience. Something that I am learning to do with working with my therapist and perhaps you might consider doing for your writing fears is to put together all the positives in a box and draw them out one tab at a time to remind yourself the JOYS of writing, so that the negative monster can shut up inside of your head so that you can progress in your writing like you want to and face the challenges and fears.

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