Sunday, May 6, 2012

Moping

Sometimes, I love my manuscript. I love my characters. I overlook all of my typos and spelling and grammatical errors. I love every single line.

Today is not one of those days.

Today is just...blech. I'm not letting  myself touch my manuscript , because I'll probably end up deleting the majority of it. In fact, right now, I'm tempted to email my agent and ask her if she'd be willing to wait for another revision. The problem is, right now I feel like my project is such crap that no amount of revising would make it worthy of publication. That maybe, I should just ditch it and start on something new because this is never, ever going to be good.

And on these days, I'm good for absolutely nothing. I mope around the house and stalk people on Twitter and glare at my computer screen and talk to myself until my mother asks if I have a boy hidden in my closet and mope some more. Usually, in my darker moods, I retreat to my room and lose myself inside that hopelessly mangled place I call my head, and I'm all sunshiney again when I come back. But. I can't do that right now. Which sucks.

So. Now I'm here. Moping on my blog, waiting for inspiration. And maybe it's coming. Maybe it isn't, and I'll wake up tomorrow newly in love with my setting and characters and plot. But what I've realized through the many ups and downs of the writing process is that I can't give up. I've promised my characters that I'd tell their story. And so I will.

I just don't feel good enough to do that right now. So I'm going to go take a nap instead.

This past week, I was told that most authors don't like what they write. But I don't believe that. True, I don't know a lot of authors. But I do know that no one would have the perseverance to see their novels through publication if they didn't love them. A lot.

How about you guys? How do you deal with these days? Or do you curl up and have conversations with yourself in the mirror? Not that I do that, of course. Um.

On a different note, I'd considered titling this post "Mopey Dick." I didn't end up going through with it, because it seemed too perverted, but I did succeed in amusing myself.



2 comments:

  1. Ugh, I hate these types of days. I get them here and there myself - I think they come with the writer territory. My solution is to just stay away from any writing and read something I really love (manga, usually).

    I've never heard of a writer who doesn't like what they write - we wouldn't work so hard on a story if we hated it! What would be the point, aside from torturing ourselves? But there are those times where every writer can't stand their novel. We just have to ride it out and wait for our love to return.

    May tomorrow be a better day!

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  2. LOL Mopey Dick. XD And I'm not laughing at the possible perverted meanings! I just like puns…anyway.

    I've definitely had those days, and I also think it'd be really sad if a writer didn't like what they wrote. If you don't like it, how are you going to get up the passion to make it zing on the page? When those days come, though, it's generally because I can sense a problem that I've been ignoring/don't want to address because I can't think of a solution. Like just this week, I was supposed to get my fourth chapter to my crit partner, but I couldn't focus on revising it at all.

    But last night, I realized that I had a logic problem, an event that didn't really make sense or have a purpose. Then, later last night, I had an epiphany on how to get rid of the event and graft in the things I needed later. I'm raring to go now! But Sunday is my self-designated day off, so I have to wait until tomorrow. The only thing I'm going to do for the present is bask in the glow of how much lower my wordcount for the affected chapters is going to be. ^_^

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