The Best Part of Writing
There’s the hard parts, and then there’s the easy parts.
I’ve really been feeling like writing was a chore for the last couple of weeks. I didn’t know if it was performance anxiety over having people suddenly throwing me money from all directions, or stress, or what. I was just missing my writing quota (1,000 words a day), and had to have a mental argument with myself every time I got on the train and was tempted to read comics or watch a movie on my iPod instead of write.
But I see now that I had it all wrong. The chapter was just hard. I was defining a culture that I know is going to have a major influence on everything I write from now on, and wanted to make it rich and complex and real, so that readers could really feel like they knew what it was like to live with these people and know their rules and ways as if they were one themselves. And at the same time, I was setting the main character in a certain light, so people could understand and sympathize with some of the horrible things he’s done.
Jeez, was I on crack when I decided to put something like that together? The whole time, I felt WAY out of my league, trying to be George RR Martin or James fricken’ Clavell.
Ever read Shogun? Read it. Seriously.
Anyway, I felt like your company softball captain trying to bat against a major league pitcher. Who was I kidding?
But I soldiered on, taking extensive notes, building a dictionary, and found out that it wasn’t really hard so much as tedious. Feh.
But then I got to the next chapter, where Arlen and Jardir, two men who will come to great conflict, are BFF, running around like buddy cops killing demons, and writing is a pleasure. I’m ahead of quota for the week with two days to spare, and am planning to crank out more. It’s like the book is writing itself and I’m just typing it. That is when writing is at its best.
The next chapter may well go back to hard work, but right now, things are a breeze.
With any luck, the sequel will be even better than the one all the publishers are throwing money at.