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In, and out of, a bind.
Jul. 9th, 2011 03:10 pmFor years Elemental has been my baby. I love the story and the characters in it far more than anything else I've ever written, even after all this time. I want it to work, but the last chapter I wrote for it was painful. It hit while my ten-year relationship with Anakin's dad was grinding to a devastating halt, and the desert setting hauntingly reflected my emotional state at the time.
I toyed with scrapping the whole project after how stilted and choppy the last chapter was, especially after one of my best friends pointed out how Agrad was frustratingly complacent and never initiated anything. Instead he just reacts to everything going on around him, much like I was afraid to take any actions in my own situation at the time. I felt like my main character had betrayed me, and I needed to write from another point of view to salvage the story and the world I was still so in love with.
It didn't work. I was relating events in detail that aren't interesting until you know the story. It sucked the life out of what I'd written before, and when I went back to look at it again it was choppy and left out details that could have made the world come to life.
The last three days I've been rereading the original first-person narrative I started so long ago, and I realized that it's still good. It's in need of a LOT of editing, but I can salvage this. It's not as bad as I was afraid it was, if I can just let go of some of the ideas I had of who Agrad is based on how I wanted to see myself at the time, and what I thought a sympathetic character would be. So I'm rolling up my sleeves and writing like I haven't been able to in what feels like forever. I've put in over 2,000 words today, words I actually feel good about for a change, and I'm not finished yet. I don't want to play video games. I don't want to watch TV. I don't want to knit.
I do want to write. And I am.
And it feels good.
I toyed with scrapping the whole project after how stilted and choppy the last chapter was, especially after one of my best friends pointed out how Agrad was frustratingly complacent and never initiated anything. Instead he just reacts to everything going on around him, much like I was afraid to take any actions in my own situation at the time. I felt like my main character had betrayed me, and I needed to write from another point of view to salvage the story and the world I was still so in love with.
It didn't work. I was relating events in detail that aren't interesting until you know the story. It sucked the life out of what I'd written before, and when I went back to look at it again it was choppy and left out details that could have made the world come to life.
The last three days I've been rereading the original first-person narrative I started so long ago, and I realized that it's still good. It's in need of a LOT of editing, but I can salvage this. It's not as bad as I was afraid it was, if I can just let go of some of the ideas I had of who Agrad is based on how I wanted to see myself at the time, and what I thought a sympathetic character would be. So I'm rolling up my sleeves and writing like I haven't been able to in what feels like forever. I've put in over 2,000 words today, words I actually feel good about for a change, and I'm not finished yet. I don't want to play video games. I don't want to watch TV. I don't want to knit.
I do want to write. And I am.
And it feels good.
