Running The Same Mile
It’s during the first mile of a run that your body warms up. Muscles loosen. You settle into your pace. As your body finds its rhythm, the effort to keep running finally relaxes.
If I haven’t been running in a while, it’s that much harder to get my feet in my shoes and get out the door.
We're feeling lonelyWriting can be like that.
Lately my writing schedule has been intermittent at best. Life intervenes, and it’s difficult to set aside time every day.
The worst part of intermittent writing is that all sorts of anxieties crowd in. I begin to doubt the quality of my work. I start focusing on the tiny details rather than the big picture. I question everything I’ve written and wind up fantasizing about tossing the lot and starting over from scratch because the next time the first draft will come out perfectly.
Case in point: I’m stalled on Creepy White Man.
I’m about two-thirds of the way through the first draft, and because I’m losing momentum, I keep wanting to go back and fix things. Pull scenes into a more coherent shape. Give that added nuance to a characterization.
But if I give in, I waste time revising the same chapters without getting any further in the draft. It’s like running the first mile over again.
A couple years ago, I read the first five books in the twelve volume series, The History of Middle-Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien from his father’s work. It is a massive compilation and analysis of the earliest versions of The Silmarillion, including the original framework tale of “The Cottage of Lost Play” in which a human, Eriol/Aelfwine, travels to the Isle of Tol Eressëa where the Elves reside.
Hobbit feet aren't made for running.
What I marveled at was the number of versions that Tolkien created of each story. Obviously this was long before computers, so hand-written copies were the only way to develop and revise. And yet it gave me a glimpse at Tolkien’s creative process, and he definitely ran that first mile again and again.
By the fourth volume, The Shaping of Middle-Earth, you get the earliest shapings of what would become The Silmarillion. While this series is focused on the variances across texts (e.g., Eriol becomes Aelfwine), it does give a sense of Tolkien’s creative process as he determines what fits into his cosmology and what falls to the wayside. In the end, the variations suggest a sense of sweeping the story forward – collecting the pieces into a neater, cleaner pile of fiction that will eventually become the final draft.
Right now, I’m going back (yet again) to sweep Creepy White Man forward, all the while trusting that once I get past that first draft / first mile marker, I won’t have to go back and start over again. Instead, I’ll be facing the new terrain of the remaining miles, and that’s always refreshing.
If I haven’t been running in a while, it’s that much harder to get my feet in my shoes and get out the door.
We're feeling lonelyWriting can be like that.Lately my writing schedule has been intermittent at best. Life intervenes, and it’s difficult to set aside time every day.
The worst part of intermittent writing is that all sorts of anxieties crowd in. I begin to doubt the quality of my work. I start focusing on the tiny details rather than the big picture. I question everything I’ve written and wind up fantasizing about tossing the lot and starting over from scratch because the next time the first draft will come out perfectly.
Case in point: I’m stalled on Creepy White Man.
I’m about two-thirds of the way through the first draft, and because I’m losing momentum, I keep wanting to go back and fix things. Pull scenes into a more coherent shape. Give that added nuance to a characterization.
But if I give in, I waste time revising the same chapters without getting any further in the draft. It’s like running the first mile over again.
A couple years ago, I read the first five books in the twelve volume series, The History of Middle-Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien from his father’s work. It is a massive compilation and analysis of the earliest versions of The Silmarillion, including the original framework tale of “The Cottage of Lost Play” in which a human, Eriol/Aelfwine, travels to the Isle of Tol Eressëa where the Elves reside.
Hobbit feet aren't made for running.What I marveled at was the number of versions that Tolkien created of each story. Obviously this was long before computers, so hand-written copies were the only way to develop and revise. And yet it gave me a glimpse at Tolkien’s creative process, and he definitely ran that first mile again and again.
By the fourth volume, The Shaping of Middle-Earth, you get the earliest shapings of what would become The Silmarillion. While this series is focused on the variances across texts (e.g., Eriol becomes Aelfwine), it does give a sense of Tolkien’s creative process as he determines what fits into his cosmology and what falls to the wayside. In the end, the variations suggest a sense of sweeping the story forward – collecting the pieces into a neater, cleaner pile of fiction that will eventually become the final draft.
Right now, I’m going back (yet again) to sweep Creepy White Man forward, all the while trusting that once I get past that first draft / first mile marker, I won’t have to go back and start over again. Instead, I’ll be facing the new terrain of the remaining miles, and that’s always refreshing.
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