006-Building Castles
“I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”~Shannon Hale
I have been going through rounds of slow, tedious edits to my work-in-progress (WIP). My editing efforts began with trying to determine how my themes played out, how real my dialogue sounds, and whether I would hit any snags in the continuity of the story.
Unfortunately, I’ve learned the fastest way to feel like shit about your ability as a writer is to print a hard copy of your manuscript, let it sit for a month or two, and then give it a read. While my intentions were to read it for the reasons listed above, I couldn’t focus on the STORY until I fixed what I WROTE! In other words, the writing was too coarse and rough, and the book as a whole fell short of where it needed to be in order to give it a thorough read. It was far from unreadable, but didn’t keep me from stopping every so often to change this word, switch the structure of this sentence, and the occasional “what the hell did I write that for” moment (those are fun).
Here’s the fun part, and what keeps me going. Writers, artists, creators alike—and all human-fucking-beings—we all want to be better, right? Seriously, we’re all striving to do more of something, aren’t we? We’re all stretching ourselves to be a better version, or at least better in some aspect. It may go to show that we’re not capable of achieving the subjective idea of ‘enough,’ because I can’t recall anyone that ever decided they’re “good enough.”
Let’s take it to another level now: those who do create, those who put forth their mind and talent out into the world for other people to see, to consume, to cherish…so many people refer to their works as their “children” or “babies,” and I think that may be because we’re provided time to allow them to grow and mature. I know you didn’t ask to spend hundreds of hours looking at a word processor because you felt like writing something terribly unpolished, but that’s the beauty. We are allowed to make mistakes. SAY IT AGAIN: We are allowed to make mistakes.
These pages got torn the hell up
I’ll keep this one short, because I think the overall message absolutely applies to writing, but also applies to everyday life, which is something I haven’t really touched on with this blog.
Writers in particular brainstorm, outline, draft, edit, add, and cut. We then have others review our work so we can then dive back in and cut some more, add parts back in, prune, groom, and spray some cologne on that shit before attempting to send it out into the world. It really isn’t that much different than those that make a plan, fail miserably, find a new way, burn bridges, lose hope, mend fences, gain support, and through experience gain an understanding that leads to satisfaction.
Maybe that’s all I’m trying to get at today. Be proud of your creativity. Be proud of yourself. We’re not supposed to be perfect, and neither is your work. Matter of fact, it’ll likely be pretty crappy after your first attempt. So keep working at it. You’ll get there, and so will I…and then we can look proudly upon our sandcastles.
#squadgoals
I would love to hear from you…feel free to comment below with your thoughts, or reach out to me personally via the Contact page. I’d love to connect with others to discuss their creative process…you may be featured in a future post—a nice way to get an extra word out about your work!