June 4, 2008

More on process

Another word about process. It's not normal for me to work in a linear fashion. My initial drafts look like bits of action, image, dialogue, plot, theory, and stray thoughts floating on a sheet of printer paper. From this raw material I forge something that resembles a scene. One of my weaknesses as a writer is my tendency to stall if I don't have everything in figured out ahead of time. I also have a habit of wanting to perfect one scene before moving on to the next. It induces a kind of paralysis in my writing, where I'm doing the same scene over and over again because I "need" it to be perfect before moving on to what happens next. As a result, I often get frustrated and down on myself then abandon whatever it is I'm working on. I think I can get trapped inside my head. I guess I need someone or something to help pull me out of that. I really want to stop sabotaging my work like this, but I'm unsure of the best way to proceed.

I suppose I should give myself permission to write about what interests me at the moment until the draft is done. So, from here on out, everything might not be in order, but it is part of the same piece.

2 comments:

  1. Again, can remembering this help you get unstuck now?

    "One of my weaknesses as a writer is my tendency to stall if I don't have everything in figured out ahead of time."

    That's always been one of my weaknesses too. It took me many years to even begin to come out of it.

    Not to discourage you!

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  2. Thanks, Jim.

    I don't see challenge as discouragement. It's more like a spur to change something of what I'm doing.

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