I
finished “Blood of Heroes” in March. It
is always great to write the final lines.
After living the story for so long, I seem to have a knack for the last
words of any story.
But first words are often a pain in the neck. I hit a wall. I knew what I wanted to do
with the follow up book “Flesh of Legends” but I had no idea where to
start. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Then I trashed and trashed and trashed. I wrote some more, forced myself through
various writing exercises, screamed at the screen and threatened to beat it
with the keyboard.
Nothing.
Yesterday,
I was going back through some of the many (many) false starts, and I came
across a piece of text, several pages in, that actually worked. It was right there the entire time.
A
few hours later, and I had managed a solid 1,600 words.
Sometimes
writing is like carving a statue of an elephant. You just remove all the bits that don’t look
like an elephant.
A writing teacher once told me that you have to write a million words before you are ready to tackle a good book. I hope it isn't true, but you are probably closer than I am.
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