Day ThirtyThree: Why I Haven’t Been Happy With My Writing

Daily Word Count: 2,273 (net)
Cumulative Words Written: 57,116
Total Words Discarded: 17,795
(I trashed over 3,000 words today, so I technically wrote over 5,000.)
Total Chapters Drafted: 24
Time Spent Writing Today: 7 hours

I’m going to be brutally honest. I haven’t been happy with my writing in several years. Not since Richard Cox stepped in and took over my novel Hard to Die three years ago, to be precise.

I could pound out reams of reasons I haven’t been happy with my writing, but I’ve learned to keep more to myself. Some things never come across no matter how many times one explains it.

Or maybe my writing has sucked for a long time.

I started this residency with a clear vision for what I wanted to create. Brain on fire, I arrived with over 25,000 words drafted. I was convinced I knew the book’s beginning, middle, and end, and I’d leave Portugal with a finished draft.

Today, with one week to go, I’m set to throw away at least 40,000 words.

I keep tinkering with the story. Delaying the inevitable. But it’s coming. I can only reuse so much from what the characters dictate. Let me tell you, these people are VERY LOUD.

For me, writing a novel is never linear. It’s fits and starts and walking and listening and venting and swearing and typing and deleting and tinkering and questioning and crying and raging bloody work. These past couple of years, I haven’t had the strength to do the work. Or the ability to concentrate. Or a healthy period to try and focus my re-wired brain.

Instead, I wasted so much energy talking. Trying to be understood. When I should’ve been scrawling my soul onto the page. If I’d done that incrementally, who knows what kind of book I’d have today?

Today’s sole picture is me, an author on a creative tear.

My characters are rich and conflicted and insistent. SO MANY LOUD PEOPLE. I’m absolutely blown away by what they’re doing. This novel will be such a window into something painfully current. Everything I’ve written up to this point has prepared me for this moment.

I am mainlining words, and I may never stop.

Well, at least, until these voices leave me alone and let me sleep.

**** I’m sorry I don’t have any pretty photos for you today. Seriously, I wrote ALL DAY, with one break to join Sarah and Jen for dinner. Jen made chicken and rice with chorizo, and I couldn’t say no to the gorgeous aroma. Or their company. I promise some electrifying photos later this week!

To follow my residency at Buinho Creative Hub from the beginning, CLICK HERE and read forward.