Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can’t they? Yet they can’t wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high-school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it. (Irwin Shaw)
This past weekend almost dealt my novel a fatal blow. I was at a write-in and making great progress, except for the fact that I wasn’t sure what I was writing. If you remember last week I mentioned that although I had achieved what I thought was lift-off in the past weeks, that my characters had gone silent. My goal for the weekend was to take every challenge, use every prompt and let my story loose.
That was starting to happen Saturday afternoon going into the end of the write-in. I was breathing a little easier. Then it struck, the last writing sprint I got 500+ words, my best numbers of the day and I was cruising in to get the last prompt: seige. Darlene, our fearless leader says times up. Okay cool, I didn’t get the word but things seemed to be moving again. Little did I know there was about to be a seige. I have this routine. I have been doing my typing on a Scrivener document. My routine as soon as the sprint is finished, copy it and paste it into a word document. Save it twice in word and then go back and save it twice on Scrivener. Right about now you are probably saying too much work, but I guess this is one of my obsessive/compulsive traits. I have a huge fear of losing my work.
Anyway, somewhere in my convoluted process, a wrong button got clicked, or my computer was hungry (I’m voting for the latter) my most wonderful words of the day, maybe of the month or even my entire writing career (I know a little extreme, just my thoughts at the moment of distress) disappeared. They were no where to be found. Me along with two other writers searched my laptop in every corner, nook and cranny we could think of. But alas no file
I left the library in a sad state. Writing anymore seemed impossible. I turned on my computer once I got in the car and hoped that my miracle worker husband would find it when three writers could not. As much as I love him he was no help, he ran into Home Depot while I searched and mourned.
Writing seemed beyond me for the remainder of the evening.
Sunday morning: I don’t write usually on Sundays and especially not before Church, so my lack of inspiration seemed to not be an issue until we got to church. (Please don’t share this story with others) My characters invaded my head during the sermon, and would not leave. This became the catalyst that would haunt me the rest of the day until finally around 8:00 I could sit down and write. Throughout the duration of the morning and afternoon ideas bombarded me like a siege. I realized the scene that disappeared from my computer was not complete. There was so much more that needed to be added to it.
So last night around 10:00 the scene that had been 500+ words became 900+ words and a much better scene. With my flagging engines I was able to fire my booster rockets and recieve a second lift off. Some may call this a coincidence, for me I will call it a God-incidence.
The moral of the story: Don’t let the little losses stop forward movement. There may be something better waiting on the other end. Regroup and move on.
Happy Writing and God Bless,
Christina Weigand
Myrria’s Story: The Dragon Knights
Word Count: 36256 words