I am trying to make this my motto. It's an important step for me because I tend to over-plan, or to out-plan myself. Let me explain.
I've been "writing" a novel for, let's say, five years. I have all the characters planned out, I know where they live, what they wear, what they like and don't like, what kind of families they have. This is all planning. I have actually written maybe one or two chapters of actual text. This is what I am talking about when I say that I out-plan myself. By the time I'm done with all the planning I have no interest or energy for the thing I was planning out. The same thing happens with stuff around the house, unfortunately. I have been planning to re-organize our upstairs room for quite a while now.
I guess what I am learning about myself through all of this, is that to actually accomplish what I want to, I just need to step off the starting line, jump off the cliff, dive into the water...write the novel, de-clutter the house, train the dog...and not get so hung up on the planning.
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3 comments:
I think we're all there with you baby.
amen!
i have countless articles and two books of my own that i'm always "planning". :)
frustrated writers of the world unite!! :-D
I would recommend that you read Stephen King's book On Writing. It is part autobiography, part advice.
He makes an interesting point (and convinced me) that good fiction is not plotted. Rather, like an archeologist, you "uncover" the story—a word, a phrase, a paragraph at time. As Sean Connery said in Finding Forester: "The first draft you write with your heart. The second, with your head."
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