It's been hard finding time to blog. Or to find something I feel like saying.
This week I wanted to write about writing ethnic minority characters, but I think I'll wait on that until later. It was applicable when I planned it, but now I'm working on something else. So look for that in the future, if you're interested.
Instead, I want to talk about my novel, or rather the progress of my novel. As you might know, I'm currently writing the first book of what I envision as a series of four. I'm not really sure what genre to label it--there's a blend of the paranormal, science fiction, and a little magic, but it's all very real-world based, so I guess it falls into magical realism. It is definitely teen lit. As a writer who hasn't been writing for some time, it's one of those pet projects I've had lying around for the last ten years (not exaggerating), but has changed so much it barely resembles the project it once was. I'm glad for that. I'm glad it took me so long to really work on it. I'm glad I scrapped beginning chapters, restructured the entire plot, the main character, and let it develop organically. It's at that stage now where I'm really excited about what I want to do with it, and where I see it going, and I know it's probably a big mess now, but that's what revision is for--fixing the mess. But that's all exposition and totally here just to provide some grounding for anyone reading this as to what my big project is all about.
My point is that I'm at that chapter. One of them, anyway. That chapter I've been dreaming about in my head for ages. That chapter I've been so excited to write that part of my motivation has been writing just to get here. At this moment. It's the second time I've hit this point in this book (there are three in the first book, and so many more in the entire series), but this is the really big one. The one that's going to set absolutely everything in motion for the remaining duration of the series even if it doesn't seem like it. I'm a little terrified to write it.
I have a problem with trusting my writing. I know what I want to say, and I'm pretty good at letting my characters say what they want to say, but I'm so bad about not editing my characters. I revise too soon (too often as I'm writing, which is a problem). I second-guess myself--that my writing isn't good enough. And I never feel this as strongly as when I get to these points--these important points that I'm dying to write but that I think I'll totally fuck up.
I can place blame for this one primarily in youthful arrogance. As a teenager I thought I was a pretty good writer, and now when I look back on that work, I want to gag myself with a spoon. It makes me wonder if all my writing was that bad (it wasn't--I am sometimes impressed by the work I did in my early twenties, mainly because it doesn't make me cringe, and while there are problematic areas I can recognize, I wish I could have seen my own progress at the time--maybe I wouldn't have quit). And here I jump again too far ahead of myself. Because now I'm second-guessing how my writing will come across now, and there's no way to know. Not now, anyway, and I really am of the belief it doesn't matter if I have a novel of crap because that's easier to revise than nothing. I need a complete story before I can solicit feedback. I know that, but it's hard for me to accept that.
So for a discussion topic, I find my weakness to be second-guessing myself. What are/were your writing-related weaknesses and what do you do to overcome them?
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