The reasons for this blog: 1. To provide basic author information for students, teachers, librarians, etc. (Please see sidebar) 2. I think out loud a lot as I work through writing projects, and I'm trying to dump most of those thoughts here rather than on my friends.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Am attempting to work on my ms at night, after putting in day hours on other projects. This will likely come back to bite me very soon, but I hate to lose the momentum I've got going.

At the moment, I feel like I'm slowly making headway into/through the difficult part of the ms.* As I sort out, break down, and hone the pieces of this part--then undo, rehone and resort, etc.--I'm starting to get a vague sense of the potential for forward motion** that lies buried in them. It's tough because each individual piece is a big murky mess and they're all out of order as well--so it's only through endless thinking and moving and rethinking and reshaping that they're able to reveal what and where they need to be.

It's a long, long process with as many steps backward as forward (and often more backward). But I currently feel good about the ms as long as I can stay with it and keep my head in it for at least a part of every day. So I'm trying to hang onto that and keep working on it for as long as I can--till I'm forced by deadlines to give up my nights as well as my days.



*This is ironic, because I occasionally look up and find that I'm back on page 102, which I think is about where I was six months ago. However, I also know that when I get this straightened out and move other chunks into place, I'm suddenly going to be a lot farther in--maybe 50-100 pages farther--and with a clear line of scenes in front of me ready to be fleshed out.

**Honest forward motion. Not the kind that comes only from a series of easy hooks--I could already have done that, many times over--but the kind that also has emotional and character heft, the kind that resonates. The kind that makes me happy to write.