One of my favorite sounds in the world is that of an orchestra tuning.
It doesn’t always begin so pleasantly — sometimes instruments screech and wail, hitting a sharp note or a clunky flat one. But after a few minutes of searching, each section comes together, and the result is a single, suspended moment of harmony. The orchestra sings, and it never fails to send chills down my spine.
When my writing is surpasses the point of mediocrity and inches its way towards brilliance, I feel it in my bones, that perfect harmony of nouns and verbs and adjectives, that magical interplay of character and setting and theme.
Sadly, my WIP is far, far from that.
I’m at the point where each word feels like a dead note, sloppy and carelessly placed. Certain sentences are a droning monotone, others are just painful, and the whole endeavor feels forced. Unpleasant. Sticky and slow and yucky. To make matters worse, my inner editor has emerged from her lair to point out all of my flaws and mistakes, and I’m having a time locking her away again.
So that’s where I’ve been for the past few days — battling it out with words and trying to bend them to my will. The frustrating thing is that I actually have an outline and a summary of this chapter… but for the moment, it refuses to be written. Perhaps the pantser in me is rebelling?
In order to force myself to at sally forth (because words written, no matter how bad they may be, are words that didn’t exist before), I decided to pull a crazy and join Camp NaNoWriMo for August. I might fail miserably, but at least it will encourage me to try and hammer out tell me no lies. And who knows? Maybe somewhere along the way, my muse will return from cocktail hour and decide to help me out a little.
Still, not all is doom and gloom. I have managed to be somewhat successful on other fronts:
– Exercise: Jumpstarted the workout regime by going for a 4 mile walk on Monday on my favorite trail. It felt so good to get moving again. I’m pledging to jump on my glider at least 3 more times this week so I can keep up the routine.
– Writing: Even though the words might be less-than-stellar, I did add about 1700 words to tell me lies. Not all is lost!
– Networking: I’m making plans to attend the Central Coast Writers Conference. I’m so excited — it’s taking place the same weekend I planned to drive back down to Santa Barbara, and as it’s being held in San Luis Obispo, it’s on my way. What I’d really like to do is to make a mini-trip of it, and stay overnight somewhere like the Madonna Inn. My mom will be with me, and it’ll be a couple of days after her birthday, so I can turn it into a networking-for-me/celebration-for-her sort of thing.
– Grading: 1/3 of the way through with final exams, and I think I can have the rest cleared out by Thursday. Once I do that, summer officially begins!
– Fun Stuff: I have a Pottermore account! I still have no idea what Pottermore is supposed to be, but I’ve got an account and a user name (FelicisMahogany64), which means I will get to play around with the beta. I’m really squealing like a five year old over all of this.
And that is all for me. The day promises to be sunny, which will be a welcome change from the whole “foggy, highs in the upper 60s” weather that we’ve been having. Mark Twain was dead-on when he said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco — the fog can chill to the bone here when it’s blazing hot everywhere else.
For those of you who are living in those blazing hot places (these seem unreal and mythical to me), stay cool! And don’t forget to do a little bloghopping — comments and love are the best way to celebrate hump-day.
It is Day 3 of Lady Antimony’s Seven Virtues Flash Fiction challenge. The theme for today: Charity. My take on Chastity is here, and my entry for Temperance is here. I’ve also made a handy flash fiction page, so once the challenge is through, all seven of my delightfully virtuous entries will be corralled into one spot.
