Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

I completed NaNoWriMo! It was touch and go there for 29 days but somehow I made over the finish line, got my 50k written and won my little:



See?

My thanks to all the encouragement from my little brother Christie and my good friend Alan who both completed as well. Congratulations you two!

Also, a big thank you to all of my Twitter friends who continually Tweeted encouragement at me. You guys know who you are and you rock!


So, what now?

Well, as I maybe mentioned before, writing is a form of Sisyphean Torture: you get the boulder up the hill only for it to roll back down again. And that's your lot in life.

Even once you get your story finished, edited, rewritten, reedited, agented, published and then you sell a million copies and get a movie made about it, you have to be hard at work with your boulder, shoving it up that damn mountain again. And it's not just because your Agent wants a sequel to that one-off story you did, it's because while you were sitting sipping Coca-Cola and eating Pringles, you got the germ of an idea in your head and you just couldn't shake it. That night as you drifted off to sleep, that germ mutated into a scene and it got you excited; got you thinking. In the morning, before sane people are getting up, you find yourself at the keyboard, tapping out the scene and wishing you'd written it down at the time. It doesn't matter though, because you just can't write as well as your imagination can paint the picture in your head. Disgusted, you walk away and have some Frosted Flakes for breakfast and watch the morning news on the telly.

But that niggling feeling in your head, the constant replay of action or conversation, has got you distracted. You have to go write it down. Your story is calling you and you cannot deny it.

So you write. And then you rewrite and then you edit.

Then you rewrite some more.

The boulder rolls down the mountain and you take a deep breath and set your shoulder against it.

Comments

  1. Mari StroudDecember 2, 2011 at 6:29 PM

    Hey, congratulations! And yep: you write and you write, and then you edit and you edit, and then you go back and write some more. Hopefully, at some point there will be money, but we'd have to be crazy (crazier) to do it for that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. GusDecember 2, 2011 at 7:09 PM

    Hi Mari,

    I would love to know what percentage of writers actually use their writing as their main source of income. I bet you the number is smaller than many people believe.

    And I think CRAZIER is right. You have to be crazy to be a writer. Sane people go out into the sunlight and mix with people occasionally.

    Thanks for stopping by Mari!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 5, 2011 at 8:17 AM

    You mean...you mean I have to go OUT there? In the sun? (Shrinks away from glare and goggles at your bravery)

    ReplyDelete

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