Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Start Your Engines


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.

2 comments:

  1. 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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    Replies
    1. Do my fifteen years in marketing and technical writing count?

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