<$Susan Goodwill$>

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Writing and Getting Unstuck


I'm looking out the window of my attic office and there's snow on the ground. Thirty-five and dreary. Aack!! And I have to walk the dogs right now.

But aside from sucky weather, today is pretty unique. Once in a lifetime actually. A lot of y'all probably got the same e mail I did. (I figure you prolly did, because I got it twice. That's usually a sign it's circulating.) At 1:02 and three seconds this morning, the time/date was 01:02:03 04/05/06. If you, like me, are a member of the Eye Missed It News Team and slept through the first one, you get another chance this afternoon.

I learned something this week about getting myself unstuck in writing. For about three weeks I was at an impasse. I tried "writing through it," that is, writing more of the story in draft form and worrying about fixing whatever it was that felt wrong later. That's what many, many writers I know would do. Tried and true method and all that. Didn't work for me. At all. Mercury in retrograde until last Saturday= Virgo in agony and all that...

So, anyway. On about the thirtieth read through of my first sixty pages, I got to about the fourth scene and something in my brain went off like a buzzer: Ennttt!

That scene was the culprit! The whole chapter really. And it needed to be dumped. I think subconsciously I didn't want to go back that far and rewrite for starters. I mean, who does? Secondly, the info that comes out in that scene is important. Listen-- the INFO was important, not what happened in the scene, cuz pretty much nothing happened. Standing around talking. Translation, a talking head scene, the next worse thing to a sittin'
and thinkin' scene.

So, I cut the scene and started rewriting from there. Boy, do I feel better. It's like I'm walking a path and walked off into the brambles and now I'm back on the path again. I actually want to write today. Sometimes the best thing about writing is kind of like when the pain goes away.

Whew, that made me feel a little sick...

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Saw the same email...nine times already.

---

I remember exactly where I was when the clock struck: 01:23:45 6/7/89.

I was outside my cubicle at work with Helen Sims. We seemed to be the only two aware of the uniqueness of the time and date. :-) So much for number geeks.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006  
Blogger Susan Goodwill said...

Thanks for posting Rick. Sometimes I think I'm just chatting away to thin air.
Wait. Sometimes I am.
Heehee.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Okay. I missed the news, totally, or am so deep into my own unstuckwritingness that I'm missing the point. Well, except for the getting unstuck. Congratulations!

Thursday, April 06, 2006  
Blogger Susan Goodwill said...

Thanks. I'm not 100% on the path, just slogging along the side I think. But it's getting better.

Happy writing, writers.
Like Rick says, only one rule, writers write.

Thursday, April 06, 2006  

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