You
know when you’re writing along, struggling to make up the story, make the
characters realistic, make the dialogue flow, make the plot intriguing, but you
just can’t find it? You know when the going
advice is just to keep writing, to push through that mess and figure it out
later? You know?
So
you follow the advice, you do what Stephan King and every other author of note
says. You write your little heart
out. Your fingers bleed from the effort
of pounding the keyboard. Your carpal
tunnel is acting up and your eyes are bleary from the strain.
Two-thousand
words. Five-thousand. Six-thousand and you have a full chapter.
Ten-thousand words, and you’re deep into the second chapter.
That’s
when the house of cards comes down.
You
knew it was wrong the whole time. You
were building your house on sand.
The
only good thing is that some of this is salvageable, and you now have the
“true” start to your book.
Goodbye
chapters one and two. You fought a good
fight, but you were outmaneuvered and outnumbered.
I've been told that the first chapter of much of what I write is "rhetorical throat clearing." That's a good way to look at it.
ReplyDeleteHaha, I like that. I'll have to add that phrase to my box of tools.
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