I had a bad writing day today. This happens sometimes when I go a few days without touching the book. I feel like I’ve completely lost the thread of the story. The characters seem flat. The story ludicrous. The writing atrocious, mercilessly bad.
“Why did I ever think I could do this?” I wonder.
The middle of this manuscript is a beast. It’s basically all the major parts of the story, and honestly, it’s been plotted and re-plotted about 14 different times. Every time is similar, but this time I really thought I had it.
I guess I didn’t, because now I’m wondering what the hell I’ve been thinking.
I’ve been doing a writing ‘sprint.’ Which for me means writing about one scene every two days. I told myself I would stick to what I had written down for the new plot, and write those scenes without thinking about other things. It’s about 14 new scenes.
But today when I looked at my scene sheet, I started losing the thread of what I was trying to accomplish. What was this story again? What were the major themes, and was I still hitting them? I started to get overwhelmed. As I questioned major characters, I wondered which really needed to be there.
Then I started getting frustrated, because why oh why had it all seemed so simple and even exciting the other day when I looked at it? Am I going crazy? Why doesn’t it seem to make any sense at all today?
My frustration turned to anger, to annoyance, to downright hatred of writing, and obviously there’s no one to blame but myself. The most frustrating thing of all.
It’s days like this when I feel like giving up. When I wonder what I’ve done, why am I harassing myself with this when there are more than enough good books in the world, and really, I could be relaxing and reading one right now.
So that’s what I did. I put aside my frustrating re-plotting document and new index cards I had planned to fill out (yet again) and post up on my wall.
I picked up Liz Gilbert’s book Big Magic. There was a quote I wanted to find there.
She writes a section under the heading: Done is Better Than Good
“The only reason I was able to persist in completing my first novel was that I allowed it to be stupendously imperfect. I pushed myself to continue writing it, even though I strongly disapproved of what I was producing.”
“That book was so far from perfect, it made me nuts. I remember pacing around in my room during the years that I worked on the novel, trying to gin up my courage to return to that lackluster manuscript every single day, despite its awfulness, reminding myself of this vow: ‘I never promised the universe that I would be a great writer, goddamn it! I just promised the universe that I would be a writer!’”
She goes on to say that she nearly threw in the towel at 75 pages, but noted she refused to go the grave with 75 pages of an unfinished manuscript sitting in her desk.
“I did not want to be that person. The world is filled with too many unfinished manuscripts as it is…so no matter how much my work stank, I had to persist.”
She finishes this chapter by quoting General George Patton: “‘A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.’ Or to paraphrase, a good enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.”
Amen to that.
She notes there is honor in completion, and I wholeheartedly agree. Everyone I speak to wants to write a novel. But so few finish. I never said I’d write a great novel. Just that I’d write a novel.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I am going to take a break. And meditate. And go for a walk. And listen to a podcast.
Then, I am going to get back to my manuscript. I will not belabor the work today, but I will spend time on it. And make a plan for tomorrow.
What I most need to hear when I want to give up?
Keep Going.