Coffeeshop Confessional - Overdue

The first part of my confessional is that this picture was actually taken 2 months ago. I got a new netbook (I love my toys) and I had intended on writing up a post when I got home and connected up to my wi-fi, but I guess I forgot.

What's worse is that this isn't the the final version of the drawing that I left behind. I also included a bit of text that indicated what my current project was. The jagged pill is that I'm still working on the same project. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't such a simple short story, but it is what it is and I've gotten done what I have. I tend to berate myself over the time constraints I have to deal with, but that isn't really productive either.

The best thing to do, I find, is to let go of the excuses and just move forward. You've got to have your mind right when you write - at least in my case. Sure, I could do better when it comes to getting right and getting to it, but that is neither here nor there. I've set my mind to trying harder to get into that zone and getting things moving again. My usual excuse it that work encompasses so much of my time and bogs down my mind so much that even in my free time I feel exhausted. That might be the case, but I've got to find a way of taking back my free time and using it more productively. I mean, otherwise dreams stay dreams and reality slowly melts away into a battalion of yesterdays ready to march onto the battlefield of tomorrow. I don't want to become a slave to procrastination. I've got too much left to do. You can't wait for life to be right for you before taking action and moving forward.

My current project is still "The Viability of a Seed" but I expect to have my first draft done by the end of the week. Then it's back to working on my book. I have more short story ideas that I would like to work on, but all in good time.

Writing: When Your Strengths Hold You Back

I would have to say that one of my biggest writing strengths is my power of description. I love to imagine that I'm painting a picture so vivid and real in someone else's mind as they read my writing, but the truth is... too much description can kill pacing and leave some readers feeling robbed of imagining events the way they would like to.

That is a hard realization for me. To suddenly see what you considered to be your strength as a potential pitfall can be disheartening to say the least. Of course, the extreme is to avoid descriptive writing altogether, but that too would be a mistake. A beautiful composition has a perfect balance that can draw a reader in and provide a foundation for their own fantastic interpretation. We run into trouble when we get so engrossed in the scenery, the details of the items on shelves and the way shadows flicker across the twilight-kissed leaves in an otherwise transitional scene, that we forget that we are in the midst of a story about our characters.

Have I gone that far? I don't think so. I mean, at least no one has ever mentioned it to me. Upon further meditation, though, I do realize that the second chapter of my current project does have a bit of a problem in areas where I struggled to measure the perfect quantity of detail into the scene. It leads me believe, looking back, that if you have to ask yourself if you are including enough detail, you might just be including a bit too much in some cases. Of course, that's the beauty of rewrites. I know this is an issue now, but I have to focus on moving forward. I will keep notes as I go about things I will want to change on the next revision, but I've got to keep moving ahead.

I guess that's the biggest thing for me -- slowly getting in touch with my own personal writing process. I've said it before, time and time again, I have always had this odd prejudice against rewriting and cutting. I truly expected that I should be able to cough up each story or poem perfectly formed and in the final state. Of course, this caused a lot of tension and a lot of setbacks where I deleted pages upon pages of decent starting material simply because it did not meet my expectations. I have since learned that this starting material is not as bad as I had thought. Sure, it must be sifted and refined, but there are

still rough gems to be found. It is only a fool who tosses these castings, hoping instead to find the perfect diamond or shimmering nugget.