Friday, September 15, 2006
That little voice
It's been a rough week for me. School is . . . taking more time than I thought it would and at much more cost than I thought. When I judge a contest or read a fellow author's stuff, I have to be nice, but I say what I think, honestly. In neither case (contest or critique) is the writer served by me saying things I don't think are true. And in the case of another author, I know I'd be darn upset if someone didn't tell me something sucked if they thought it did. But this workshop/seminar is a real challenge. So far, most of my fellow students are horribly naive.
For several reasons too complicated and personal to mention just now, I have decided to get stricter with myself about listening to that little voice in the back of my head that whispers,
Hey, you should do (fill in the blank). I have come to the conclusion that the inner voice is right more often than it's wrong. I am not, by the way, referring only to writing.
Speaking of which, I'm doing a complete and utter rewrite of The Rake, which I have retitled Scandal. Basically I'm starting over. I like what little I have so far. Up until tonight I had three chapters, and I was staring at chapter one today and working on it a bit. Then I got to chapt 2 and I thought, gee, this is more interesting than chapter 1.
I should just toss out all of chapter 1. But I didn't want to throw out 1500 words that were pretty good, and then I thought I could just leave chapter 1 there and see if I couldn't do something with it.
Then I realized I needed to listen to the instinct. So I'm now starting with chapter 2, and it's already much much better. I've been working on chapter 3 (now chapter 2) and am marginally happy.
