Post-Partum SFD Paralysis

"When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

~Kurt Vonnegut

I'm looking at a toppling pile of notebooks and papers and books, to which I'm refusing to add anything else. Unless I'm willing to accept the consequence of insanity. Which I don't have time for.

The pile is dedicated to information related to rewrites.

My psyche is dedicated, at the moment, to self-destruction.

At the time I began amassing this amess, or amessing this amass, I told myself, "Not now. Right now, you need to write your SFD ('Shitty First Draft' ala Anne Lamott). Time to learn all about this later."

What a dope.

No longer stricken with post-partum SFD paralysis, here's where I'm heading:

• I've determined that whatever I decide, the first step will be daunting. Get over it.

• Like trying to eat the elephant in the room, I will handle the task one bite at a time. (Who in the world is responsible for morphing the idea of an elephant in the room into something I would like to eat? They should be shot. Then eaten.)

• I'm smart enough to learn forever. I'm not smart enough to get it all figured out this afternoon.

• Figuring out a system that worked for me to write an SFD took some trial and error, and so will figuring out a system to rewrite. I will heed what those who've gone before me advise, but ultimately it will become a personal blend of what works and what doesn't.

And so . . . there's no time like the present.

CR: About to finish Relentless by Dean Koontz. It's about an author running for his life and a lunatic book critic stalker. Don't you wonder where he got the idea?

It's all better with friends.

I've Birthed a Book!

"I hope that this time I will be able to hold all the threads together, that the characters will evoke a sense of reality, that what I've written will elucidate a theme, that an occasional paragraph will sing, that I can, in a phrase I learned in England, 'bring it off.' This, I believe, is the constant ambition of the writer and his constant prayer."

~ JAMES A. MICHENER

I finished my SFD about 6:30 last night. After pacing (and yeah, flexing a little), I finished printing it out about 9:30.

Now what? My last two attempts are stuck in the proverbial bottomless drawer.

This one is different.

I have about twelve gazillion craft books and workshop notes on editing. Too much data.

The next few days are going to be focused on researching this next giant step. That delay will help with the "settling/stewing" thing I've heard about so often.

Nothing like accomplishing something by doing nothing.

CR: Relentless by Dean Koontz.

Will be crawling through Margie Lawson's Deep Editing system, Chris Roerden's Don't Murder Your Mystery, Browne and King's Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass, with Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird standing by to make me feel better.

It's all better with friends.

Not Yet Seamless

I went on a search the other day for an earlier mention of something in the book I'm writing. Scrivener was a great help, because all I could remember were the basics of the scene and in whose POV I'd written. So I went looking for the lilac colored scenes roughly in the place I thought my search would take me.

I found it. But, sorry to say, I found so much more. I'm now a little terrified to finish my SFD and begin the rewrite.

Here's what I'm sure is just the tip of the iceberg:

~ Names of characters who I only used once. They were probably meant to play some small role at some time, otherwise, why did I give them names?

~ Threads that should've gone somewhere, but are just blowing in the wind. And when I saw them, I thought, "Oh yeah, that was good."

~ Threads that should've gone somewhere, but are just blowing in the wind. And when I saw them, I thought, "What in the world was I thinking?"

~ Threads that should've gone somewhere, but are just blowing in the wind. And when I saw them, I thought, "Watching cement dry would be more exciting."

The closer I get to the end of my SFD, the more little bubbles of acid blurp up my throat.

Angst-acid.

CR: Still working on the Lisa Unger. I'm trying to reconfigure how I read books and my Kindle now that I've had LASIK.

It's all better with friends.