by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I got really drunk last night and the only price I’ve had to pay — I don’t get hangovers — is a serious case of angst about my behavior. Not that I did anything so bad that I embarrassed myself, but I do feel a sense unease that I continue to do something dumb like bar hop and getting wasted on a weekday as I approach my 50th birthday.
But yesterday and today have been really productive otherwise. I talked a lot about the plot of the novel with the people around me and was pleased with the general reaction. Though a number of people, I fear, may have thought I was a little too forward and, as such, kind of creepy. But that’s been a problem my entire life — I generally have never met a stranger, for better or worse.
Anyway, I spent many, many hours today continuing to struggle with the first chapter of the second draft of the novel. The reason why it’s so difficult is the very beginning of the novel is the cornerstone of the whole thing and, as such, I have to figure out exactly what the story is about and how much I’m going to tell readers from the get-go.
This leads to me time and again thinking I have everything figured out, only to realize, nope, sure don’t. Almost all the scenes get thrown out, reimagined and otherwise thrown up in the air. I think I may have stabilized things, but only by pretty much starting from scratch.
Doing this, while necessary, is a real pain in the ass because it definitely makes me feel like I’m treading water. The solution to this during the first draft process, was to just race through things and once I had something, anything settled I kept moving. I feel the bar is a lot higher with the second draft, often what happens is my storytelling ability gets better and everything collapses when I realize I could do a lot better.
But even I will admit that my writing and storytelling ability have gone much, much, MUCH better everytime everything falls apart and I have to start from scratch. Having said that I don’t want to let my perfectionist streak cause me to never finish anything.
