I’ll admit. When you write, i feel like your relationship with writing changes over time.
There is a time years ago when I wrote my first ever draft of Conjured Secrets when I ‘fell in love’ with writing.
The words pattered through the keyboard as I could feel my characters come to life. My mind can picture them to plenty of detail, yet with the capacity of wanting to capture what my characters are doing, I took better care with my characters than with the scenery around them.
It was short, quick yet got the idea across. It almost seemed like a script you’d read for a theater piece.
However, over time, the writing starts to get longer. How you add and perceive the characters and the story as a whole starts to change.
I remember there were times where some of the protagonists were antagonists, or at the very least, rivals. They won’t agree with what they are doing, and…my characters still do that now. Yet I find they seem to work with each other a bit better than how they were like before. (But I am prembling a bit too much.)
The writing rough of a block.
Sometimes, after writing a variety of different drafts in a spur of the moment, the imagination running wild. There are periods where instead of being in a jungle, tossing and swirling around, you’re in a hot, sweltering place of green. Looking around every step, there never seems to be an end to the long treacherous piles of sticks, leaves and trees ahead of you.
The best you can do? It’s to keep on going, to be as consistent as you can. Don’t aim for the huge goals. Eventually, the sun will go down, it won’t be as hot.
Like a writing sprint, you would eventually find the writing getting easier to write with, and you would need to be in game before you can reap the benefits of writing the longer word counts that you used to write if and when you manage to do that.
Collection of drafts.
I’ll be honest, for Conjured secrets, I’m convinced that I have created around 10 drafts of the same story. It’s just each way, it’s told in a slightly different way. The characters change, the circumstances change, and sometimes, your understanding changes.
Some drafts, you write out longer prose, trying to decipher every single detail, backstories and whatever you can think of, just to convey the story.
But that too changes. Nowadays in my latest draft, there comes a point where you try to think and decide: will this show some deeper understanding about the character’s world?
I’ve come to a point where I thought that it’s probably a great idea to try to consider every word that I am writing, and how it contributes to the overall story. You wouldn’t want to read 90,000 words where lots of it is filler or out of character. I’d rather write 70 – 80 thousand word story where everything is part of the story as it needs to and brings the perfect amount of length, conflict and story into the lesson you want to share with your readers.
But I wonder… There comes a point where I wonder if having so many drafts is the answer, or you are just delaying the hopeful inevidible.
The quitters and break goers
I will admit, this story has had a break once upon a time, and there is no shame in taking a break from it every once in a while. It is necessary to have a bit of a break after every book, and have also had times where I’ve had breaks from my story in the middle of it too.
There’s a point where it’s said that quitting on the story that you want to write about is one of the worse things to do, unless you are really not into writing that sort of story, it’s best to put it aside, maybe it’ll come back as a different idea.
You would never know what you can build with a story, but also it is a process that you don’t want to force either. So that is something that would need to be thought about and cultivated over time.
Final words
I’ll admit, this is something that takes alot of scope and perspective to understand. Writing isn’t always easy or a walk in the park. Sometimes it tests you. The constant editing and revising makes you go so slow that you don’t feel like you want to write any more.
You want to put it aside, and go to the next one. Yet I find that sometimes, it’s best to go through the trenches, to dare to explore deeper within your characters and story.
Writing and editing isn’t for the faintest hearted. But for those who are driven by such acts, will find the greatest reward from it.