Robert Priest's Blog: Blogging not logging - Posts Tagged "writing-process"

Just finished the final edits for book 2 of the spell cross series, second kiss. Typically I love the editing process. It's easy for an author to get attached to particularly flowery formulations even when they are slightly over-the-top. A good editor can point these out and clear the way for a straight narrative line. There were one or 2 very musical phrases that were hard to let go like “still finding their places in the ancient algorithms of the thaumaturgy." but it's done now and the book is better for it. I particularly like the second book. I love the ending. Now having taken a few days off I'm back at book 3. I've got about 40,000 words of first draft and now I have to put the pieces together and see what else needs to be written. Plus do a lot of tidying up and editing and melding of text. But so far I am continuing to enjoy this, though those procrastinated hours that lead up to finally doing some writing are no fun at all. Well, except when my chosen means of diverting myself is to write a poem. It has also led to tidying my room, my house, exercising. You can find an entry about book 2, second kiss in the new Dundurn catalog https://bnccatalist.ca/ViewTitle.aspx...

I've done a good solid assembly of chapter 1 of missing piece. I'm leaving it a little loose because first chapters so often wind up having to be changed to accommodate certain details that come later unexpectedly. And now I'm about halfway through the same process for chapter 2. The worst part of all this I think is probably the part before the writing begins. the elastic of potential procrastination. One flops about in an open-ended limbo a little bit like a worm caught on the hook of the necessity of writing—given the time frame involved when the book is due. Squirm squirm. No offense actual worms on books. I don't want to trivialize your agony.

I am a secular person but there's a certain amount of very local faith involved in writing this novel. Faith that I can get through all of the challenges that arise and constantly seem poised to completely undo all the work that's been done so far. I like that faith. It's not extreme. It's reasonable. So in that sense you could say I'm a writer of faith.

Of course it's all afloat in great doubtfulness. Chiefly doubting that on any particular day the act of writing will actually begin. Whether one will face the enormous amount of work that has to be done and the fact that one can only do a little bit of it at a time Sheesh. Imagine how poor Homer must've felt.

And so, standing up
blogging not logging, leaving no stumps, no ruined environments, having procrastinated indefinitely on the whole ending of the world project, not to mention getting down to work on my novel, i bid thee adieu

After a long day resisting writing yesterday when I finally got down to doing “just a little bit” so that I wouldn't feel completely useless I had a vision. It's a vision I had before even starting this novel of papers in the wind but yesterday it took on a meaning within the new story that pretty much thrilled me and allowed me to in good conscience click my “had a worthwhile day” button. I wasn't going to get into writing the whole scene but I did do a quick rundown of what should take place and what the mechanics of it had to be. And what was the micro story that whirled behind it. By that time I was feeling so useful I didn't even have to count the words. Then I did some work on my sonnets—strict Shakespearean sonnets mostly with rhymes and everything but no archaicisms and no syntax torturing -- in fact in hopes of achieving the effect of common speech. I don't know why. I can't completely justify it. I sometimes backpedal about it but I go on doing it nevertheless. About 15 of them. One things for sure I've noticed with writing that the more I write the more I write and you get to a point where you don't have to waste a lot of your energy on overcoming resistance you're just there in the whirlwind reaping and sowing away. once all wheels are rolling the wider fields of the mind become available, into and on job frequently just throwing stuff into your consciousness. it was like that.