Fresh Attempts

Dear Friend,

Often it is proper motivation that gets something moving. I find myself stuck in writing more than I care to admit.

I love what I do, so its easy, right?

No.

If writing a book were easy more people would be published.

I have more ideas than I can write, or so it feels. The truth is if I write regularly, I would get more done.

That’s the sticking point - more.

More projects can lead to feeling thin and spread out.

More time does not mean more words.

More words do not mean they will be good or useful words.

I tend to think and plan my stories from start to finish, linearly.

I’ll plan each character entirely, then see how they fit together.

But I think I get caught up in “show don’t tell” and feel like I have to walk through their entire life before I can get to the point I’m writing.

It’s just fear. It’s me doubting that I can write the good stuff. Doubting that readers will like or understand anything without knowing everything.

TV shows do that all the time.

I’ve been working on a new story and kept getting stuck. I was bored and over-thinking the scenes.

Finally after almost a week of not writing at all, I decided to skip to the beginning of the end and write the part that made me want to write the story in the first place. I expected to get a little bit done but I was wrong.

I wrote it all.

It took a few hours but I wrote over 4,000 words.

Oh no! Math.

Words are important because no matter the page size, they stay the same.

For reference, this is roughly 300 words long, so 4,000 words would be almost 14 of these blog posts, and Yes, that is a lot!

Heather

(Originally written August 8, 2021)