I'm not sure why that is. I know I enjoy sharing such details, because it benefits me in different ways; it just seems almost.. pointless. Like a job that I'm not getting paid enough to do.
What bothers me most, is that I yearn to write for a living and tucking my head in the sand whenever anything noteworthy happens just screams of laziness to me. It's not to say that I've stopped writing altogether, but I have these periods where inspiration is desperately needed. I need to feel the fire of it, spurred along by an all-consuming passion where words drip from my fingers like a gushing waterfall.
But lately, it seems more like a clogged toilet in the amount that I've been producing. A paragraph here, an idea change there.. it seems like my book will take forever to get done.
What I'm trying to figure out right now, is the right approach. According to Stephen King's book "On Writing", he encourages the writer to avoid plotting out their stories and going with the flow. That's an interesting perspective and it does much to help anyone who feels hesitant with writing; but it seems to be the wrong tack for me to take.
The reason being, is that I keep going off the rails. What may start off as a cool idea, can quickly evolve into something else altogether. As a result, tone and cohesion suffers in the midst of my faltering attention to details.
So, I'm toying with the idea to perhaps try and explore a more methodical route when it comes to writing fiction. I need to settle on the type of narrative (first person, second, third - past tense/present, etc), decide on how character development will take place by constructing an arc that I can hang my words like ornaments upon. I'd also need to figure out if I should try writing chapter by chapter and to fit them with climaxes and whatnot.
My book at the moment, doesn't lend itself well to categorization and I am left wondering if I should "commercialize" it for mainstream readers; or to just do my own thing. It's tricky to decide when you have chapters that are 9,000+ words long and there are IM conversations scattered throughout.
It's really not easy being a writer. Especially when it comes to attempting something of 70,000 words or more -- which I already do have, but not in a format that I consider to be worthy of publication.
The onus is on me, with this one. Perhaps I should abandon the book for now until I can hone my skills enough to attempt anything more ambitious beyond short stories. Which, I don't think I would mind because a short story is so much fun to write, with so little pressure involved that maybe I would need to look at a full-length novel as a series of short stories with the same character.
Hmm. We'll see. One thing that's for certain however, is that I refuse to give up on my dreams.
It's all I have left.
