Someone asked me the other day if I like my current WIP better than anything else I’d written…
It’s an interesting question, and one I hadn’t really considered. It’s probably like how I feel about my daughters – I clearly don’t love one more than other, but I can absolutely appreciate all their differences. I’m not blind to their little flaws, but I cherish ‘em because of them, or in spite of them. And every time I spend time with each one, just the two of us, just like I every time I go back and read something I’ve written, I find new things to appreciate, and new things to like all over again.
More honestly, there are more times when I hate my WIP. The appreciation only comes after it’s done. During that hard middle slog of each and every book, when the siren song of starting something new, something I haven’t already messed up or that’s not turning out quite the way I envisioned it, is the loudest, is when I can really hate what I’m working on. That’s why there are so many 50 page novelists – everyone loves a new beginning, but before too long, once the cracks start to show – once it all becomes a lot of work, it’s easy to hate what you were once so eager to create.
If there’s any one thing that’s pushed me further in my writing, figuratively and literally, it’s pushing past that point: trusting my original instincts, and just telling myself that when it’s all said and done, I will find things that I really like, and if there’s enough of them, I’ll be able to get back to that story idea I loved enough to begin.
The picture for this week’s post was taken by oldest daughter. My thing is writing, her’s is photography. She captured a shot of me and my two other girls hiking a long a ridge.
A picture is worth a thousand words, right? If so, I might love this more than anything I’ve ever done…
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