I’m just throwing words at a page a the moment, the way kids throw a ball against a wall in films, telegraphing boredom and ‘I’ve got nothing better to do’. Unlike them, I am not about to discover a secret portal into the past or have a life changing experience with my peers on the way to see a dead body.
I am stuck, throwing not particularly good words at a wall in a not particularly good order.
So I keep on going, knowing it is rubbish but keeping on all the same. This week, my week off I said I’d make 5000 words. This week. 5000 words?
To avoid this vertical struggle, I just read the opening of Sherlock Holmes – A Study in Scarlet. It reads so honestly – first person – Watson talking about his experience in Kandahar. I think my novel is too much about my own attitude to my experience looking back (bitter) rather than the experience itself, which was actually kind of joyful and reasonably positive at the time. Only in grizzled hindsight have I become bitter. At the time I was happy and excited – surely that should shape the novel? It has totally affected the way I write. None of my characters are ‘nice’, not even okay. One of them is close to me, but only because we share all the same slovenly, trashy bad habits. Didn’t even Bonfire of the Vanities have some balanced, optimisitc characters? Generation X?
I’ve decided to basically write through it and do a first read though in June. 13 weeks at 5000 words a week. June will be the first chance I have to read back and see what kind of a big poo I have done on the page and whether I can mop it up. The finish line is everything. Is this a stupid strategy? Words of support, answers to questions and any kind of input are moooooossssst welcome right now.
Yours,
Dejected for all the wrong reasons on Valentine’s Day x
Stefanie Moore 