Writing can be rewarding but by the gods it can be frustrating too! Fellow writers will be familiar with this, I am sure. It’s absolutely true what they say, the devil is in the details.
When working on a scene, whether it’s dialogue-heavy or action-heavy (or both) there’s a lot to think about, like background and motivation of the characters involved, or even just the background of the world you’re working in (whether it’s real world, or sci fi/fantasy)
Sometimes you get stuck on a scene, and you keep playing out different possibilities or choices in your head, but you keep rejecting them because for some reason this or that won’t work, and it’s especially frustrating if the reason is minor or petty.
It’s even more frustrating when the detail you need to move the scene forward, the one you’re trying to figure out, is minor and petty in itself, and some people might just say fuck it and skip it, but you KNOW this shit has to be resolved/worked out before you can move forward with the scene. Brainstorm this, brainstorm that, nothing fruitful comes out of it, and it makes you angry and frustrated and you wonder if something’s wrong with you.
So you spend days, weeks, if not months, trying to work out this detail that shouldn’t be such a bloody pain in the ass but is, and then one day, after much frustration, you finally have that lightbulb moment, or brain-spark, or stroke of inspiration, or your muse decides to not be a bitch that day, whatever you want to call it, and you finally resolve that problem and can finish the scene and move on with the rest of the story.
And then you ask yourself why your stupid fucking brain didn’t come up with this in the first place instead of making you struggle however long you did.
But that’s not the end of it! Even though you managed to solve that detail, you know there’s going to be more details in the future, and you’ll run in this problem again, and deal with that frustration again... but it’s not like you can just stop writing.
Oy vey.
No comments:
Post a Comment