Rebecca Graf's Blog - Posts Tagged "starting-over"
Learning to Change Gears
You have the right idea. You get started writing. Not far into it, you realize that it is not going where you wanted it to. It's not getting better. It's getting worse. That is when as an author you step back and either start over or take an entirely different path.
That's where I found myself this week. I had started a satire on our public school systems. It started off good. Not great, but good. But it took a serious and dark turn. I kept pushing forward to only find it getting worse. I stopped. This is not what I wanted. I wanted people to laugh while seeing the sadness of it all. What did I do? I stopped and took a few days to redirect myself. The result? I'm starting over. I'm going to do it right this time. I'm changing the POV and the style. I'm making it what it should have been in the first place.
As a writer, you don't always have things happen as you want. Even as you write a wonderful piece, you find that a character has developed more than you had originally intended or that a different situation would work better than the one originally thought of.
This is when you realize that your book is more than thoughts and words. It is coming alive and you are just there for the ride.
That's where I found myself this week. I had started a satire on our public school systems. It started off good. Not great, but good. But it took a serious and dark turn. I kept pushing forward to only find it getting worse. I stopped. This is not what I wanted. I wanted people to laugh while seeing the sadness of it all. What did I do? I stopped and took a few days to redirect myself. The result? I'm starting over. I'm going to do it right this time. I'm changing the POV and the style. I'm making it what it should have been in the first place.
As a writer, you don't always have things happen as you want. Even as you write a wonderful piece, you find that a character has developed more than you had originally intended or that a different situation would work better than the one originally thought of.
This is when you realize that your book is more than thoughts and words. It is coming alive and you are just there for the ride.
