May has been one of those months where you feel like you spent it running in sand and getting nowhere. Every now and then you hit a hard patch and make some progress, but then it softens again and you sink back down, spinning your heels, digging yourself a deeper hole to climb out of.Which is weird in a sense because I've accomplished things this month. I ran my first 5K. I went to the writers' retreat and had great success there coming up with a new book idea and fixing one I already had. I took parting our work's pedometer challenge (just 4 days left...) and am currently first in my office by a large margin and second right across the country, behind the frontrunner by just a smidgen of steps. I wondered this morning if she's as much of a hurting unit as I am - after two softball games, yard work and a 5 K walk yesterday, my muscles and I are no longer on speaking terms.
But despite all that, I hit a roadblock with writing. My ending wasn't coming together like I wanted it to. Too much happening, not enough space to provide for it all. I tried out a few different scenarios trying to blend some scenes or maybe cut others but when I did, other things started to fall apart. I think I finally have the issues resolved, and as usual I'll go over my page count, but hopefully not by too much. If I can keep it to 20-30 pages I'll be happy. I can go back and fix that in the final edit.
So my goal for June is to get back on track. Get my pages in each day and finish this manuscript by the end of June. That will give me the month of July take off. Not from writing, just from this manuscript. I'll spend the month working on the plots for Book 2 and for Finding Home. Then in August, I'll do my final read through and edit and then it's off to the agents it goes!
Now all I have to do is stop playing in the sand and get to work.
7 comments:
It sounds like you've gotten an awful lot accomplished over the past month, Kelly. Completing the 5k run alone is a major accomplishment! You'll hit another rough patch so you can take off again. :)
I have total confidence your ending is better than you think. The month off from the MS in July sounds like a plan. August eyes will be fresh and not so picky.
Do you know who the first place person is? 2nd across the country, Kelly - you amaze me, even when I should know better.
Write the ending Kelly. You can edit the book down by a few pages when you're finished. And what's a few thousand words over, anyway? I bet it's worth every extra word.
LOL For someone 'running in sand', you accomplished quite a bit this month.
And I have no doubt that whoever the first place person in the step contest is, that person will not be in that position for long. :-)
Good luck with finishing the book. It's sounds like a good plan to then shelve it for a month.
May has been a month like that for me, too - running in the sand. An appropriate analogy. But yes - you HAVE accomplished quite a bit. Maybe it just doesn't feel like it right now, but when you're in the middle of June, you'll look back on this month and think, WOW.
Yay for finishing your first 5K run - quite a milestone!
As for your WIP - I'm sure you'll figure everything out when you read it with a fresh eye.
Oh, I totally know what you mean. I'm right there with you with writing. So many other things are going on, the writing seems to have gotten lost.
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