I'm quite aware of the fact that, basically, I died over summer. There were no posts on this li'l blog of mine. I don't really have a suitable excuse other than I was busy and I was working on other things. Pathetic? Maybe. True? Yes. Definitely.
So, in the past four-ish months, a lot of things have happened. Just before I went on this unintended hiatus, I finished the second draft of Empty Alibi. I've spent the summer working on that novel. Trying to get through draft three. Writing and rewriting and rewriting the first chapter, replotting things in the middle I knew were messy, introducing and removing characters, introducing and removing entire subplots, chapters, scenes, you name it. I had plans to enter the OYAN Novel Contest back in August...which I ended up not going through with.
I've still not written draft three. My document is sitting there, at 13,000 words, and it's been removed from the little 'pinned documents' section of Word. I've still got all of my character pictures and doodles for that story taped up on my wall, but I'm no longer aggressively making sticky notes for it. At least not right now.
I don't know. This post is going to be...weird. Rambly. Probably not going to make any sense. In fact, I may end up typing this whole thing up only to get to the bottom and think, "Nah, better not publish that." But I need to type this up so bad, and you know what, I need to get over myself and actually get back into blogging, because gosh darn it, I've missed this. I like rambling into a void where people are possibly reading what I'm writing or possibly not.
Who knew?
When It's Time To Take A Step Back
I am not a very experienced writer. I mean, I like to think I am. But in reality I've only been writing seriously since last October or so. I only ever finished a first draft last November. I've since written nearly 200,000 words on that story, not counting the scenes and entire chapters in various junk pile documents for each draft. So I mean, I've done some stuff, but I'm not super experienced.
I haven't been with this story when I was really young. I only just had the idea last spring. I haven't been working on it for years and years; only about ten months. There are a handful of people that have read this story. I've only finished 2 drafts. It's a mess.
But it's so important to me.
I don't know what it is about Empty Alibi that's got me so tight. Because I look at my other stories and I see so much more of me in them. I see the things that I struggle with in Rose and Miles and Olivia and Charley; I see the lessons I'm still learning in Leona and Jo and Walter. Empty Alibi isn't exactly a 'me' story, you know? There's a lot of family drama, a lot of friendship angst, a lot of a certain someone thinking she's a lot smarter than she is and then falling hard when she realizes she isn't.
Oh, wait a second. That sounds really familiar.
So maybe there's a lot more of me in Empty Alibi than I thought.
I dunno. It's just one of those stories that seem kind of...different. I don't really intend to stick with mystery as my genre, because it takes a lot more plotting than I like and it's not where my heart lies, but I love this story still. Maybe it's because these characters are the reason I ever finished a novel to begin with. Maybe it's because they saw me through my 15th birthday, getting my learner's permit, losing my grandmother, a second workshop, and countless lonely weekends. Maybe it's because this story, with its ins and outs and its messy plot and even messier characters, has been my semi-haven. It's where I've went when I'm standing in a crowded room and I still feel lonely; it's the thing that I do when it's late at night and I can't sleep and instead of staring at the ceiling I pull out a notebook and start writing a scene. This may sound weird, but Bethany is how I've processed countless awkward, embarrassing, frustrating, and exciting moments in the past ten months. I look at the things that happen and I think, "Okay, how would she deal with this?" And then I go and plot some more.
All that to say, this story is so important to me. It has my heart. I think it always will, in some form, even if it's just a tiny little corner that's collecting dust and is mostly for nostalgic purposes. I think that in twenty years I'll look back at the things I wrote for Bethany and Elliot and Jules and Chapman and I'll smile, and I'll remember how important it was to me, and it will still be there, faint and almost forgotten.
And even with all of that, with everything that this story is to me, the idea of sitting down and trying to write it makes me want to go curl up somewhere dark and cry. It makes me want to hit my head against my desk repeatedly. I don't know why. I really wish that this wasn't like this because darn it, I actually want to write this. I want this story to get better and become what I know it can be, but I sit down to write it, and nothing happens. It got to the point where I was actively avoiding writing because I did not want to try and suffer through another unproductive afternoon.
I was starting to get to where I didn't like writing. It hurt, and not like writing should hurt. It was me sitting there, typing out 50 words, 100 if I was lucky. And it's been like that since...July, I think. Mid-July.
So here I am. It's mid-September, and I've been sitting at 13,000 words since this time last month. At this point, I'm not even working on Empty Alibi. I'm writing a modern retelling of Emma by Jane Austen.
And I needed this, I think? I needed to step back from that story even as much as I love it and work on something else. I needed to stop thinking of everything as "How would Bethany approach this?" and as "How do I approach this?"
I don't know. Can you love something too much? Is that possible? Is it possible to be so completely in love with a project - a novel, an art piece, a song, whatever your choice of medium is - that working on it ceases to be a good idea?
I am not in love with the words that I wrote, or with the scenes I was pounding out. What I love is the essence of that story, the characters, their struggles, their relationships. I think I am too close to that story to do it any justice right now.
For the past ten months, I've worked on it. I've had little pockets of time where I did other things - in between drafts 2 and 3 back in May, I plotted Letters to the Dead big time. I've done a lot of development on other stories, too, in between scenes and in spare time. But for the most part, it's been just Bethany for ten months, and I've gotten too close in. I know the story too much, maybe.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't think any of this makes sense. And maybe I am wrong about all of this. Maybe it would be better if I kept plugging away at Empty Alibi, in the long run, but I don't care. I don't care. Does that make me a 'bad' writer?
Right now, I am going to write Love And Other Impossible Things. I am going to let myself get back into first-draft writing - that feeling of exploring a story at its most basic, knowing it doesn't have to be perfect, knowing nothing, really. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write the first draft of that novel and I'm going to plot Letters to the Dead, and in a couple of months, after I've had time away and I've let myself work on other things, I'll come back.
So this isn't me giving up. I want to want to work on Empty Alibi again, and at least right now, I don't think trying to keep working on it is the answer. It's time to step back, turn away, and let go. And it will still be there in two months. It will still be there in two months, six months, a year, two years, because at the end of the day it is my story, and it always will be.
Pardon the rambling in this post, and the probable nonsensical analogies and descriptions. I needed to write this.
And also, I now have something to point people to when I say I'm not working on Empty Alibi at the moment. Blogs are nice like that.
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