I'm in one of those (usually) short fallow periods that seem to be a part of my process. What that means is that I need to let my subconscious pick away at some identified problems in the structure of the book going forward.
The way it usually goes is my subconscious spots a big old problem in the plan before I actually get to it in the text and I have conscious "well damn," moment. I then stall out for a while, usually on the order of a week or two while my backbrain picks away. Then, at some point I say, "the hell with it, I'm just going to write through it," and I do so. I suspect that I hit the write through it moment because my subconscious has solved the problem and sends some subtle message to the motivational centers.
Unfortunately, there's a potentially perfectly valid alternate theory: I'm lazy. I hit a difficult spot and don't want to do the work to get through it, so I go off and woolgather until my Midwestern guilt at not working gets bad enough to drive me back to the keyboard where I solve the problem in real time by just writing through it and all the fallow period stuff is so much sophistery to disguise the fact that I don't actually like to do hard work.
I strongly suspect and hope that the first theory is the correct one but I'm aware enough of my ability to self-justify that I will never really know, and that's actually pretty aggravating.
Sigh.
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2 comments:
Kelly,
I'm with you, buddy. And for what it's worth, it definitely sounds like processing to me. I've occasionally forced myself to write scenes, even when I couldn't see in my head where things were going and knew I needed to. Ultimately, I always ended up having to toss those scenes out.
It's the difference between writing words and writing the right words.
And incidentally, I never feel lazy for staring out the window or at the ceiling, and working on the story in my head because I find that part of the process a lot harder and a lot scarier than actually writing scenes.
These days I try to accept, albeit nervously, that part of the process. So far, whenever I've actively struggled to tell a better story by stopping to ponder the plot, the subconscious has always eventually come through and shown me the way I couldn't see.
So...do I appreciate the subconscious? Well, yes. But do I wish it punched a clock like a Teamster, rather than wandering in occasionally like an eccentric millionaire? Well, yes. Hell yes.
As always though, the hard is what makes it great. ;)
Hey Kimber,
Yeah, getting the subconscious to pull in harness a little more smoothly would be very nice. Ah well, I'm not really allowed to complain too much. To quote from Chess, "I'm where I want to be and who I want to be and doing exactly what I always said I would..." Of course, I depart from the song at that point which goes on to say "and yet I feel I haven't won at all," and I feel that I've won a great deal.
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