So that's who you are!
So I've recently tried posting here from my Android phone only to discover, upon finally venturing back here via laptop, that the posts never appeared. Hmmm...will have to play around with that to figure out why.
Anyway, little has happened on the reading/writing front for a bit of a while. Life certainly has its way of being very very demanding from time to time. However, the juices are flowing and things are shifting to where I can once again get back to doing what I love.
And I've realized an interesting thing: Every word I have ever written from the POV of one particular character (with the exception of the most recent two chapters) has to be scrapped. Yes, writings that go way back to the dark days of junior high school even are destined for the trash bin (which to a writer usually means stuffed away in a box somewhere because I imagine I'm not the only one who doesn't throw away anything I've ever written).
I'm actually excited. This character, a woman, has gone through so many transformations. I have struggled with her more than any character I have ever created. And she's long been one of my favorites. I realized, however, what I was doing wrong. Somehow she always ended up the victim of circumstance. All of my other characters bent others to their will whereas she was lost in the current all the time whether that was my intention or not.
Her scenes in my current WIP, which have her at a younger age than I have ever previously written her, ended up getting sidetracked in the same way. Luckily I caught it. And I started the opening of the WIP over, which not only brought this story that has been in my head for many decades alive, it finally brought her character out. It took my thick skull a long time to just let her be herself but I've finally learned to just get out of the way.
And now I am excited and nervous but I have to trust her. I'm putting her in quite the bind but I am confident she will show me how she will overcome it and take her first steps down the road I've always envisioned for her.
I never realized just how hard it would be to take a character from the beginning stages, to show how she can become who she becomes later in her life.
And its not one of those I'm a man trying to write a woman things, since I have plenty of female characters. Its just her...and actually her father now that I think about it. He's gone through quite the transformation as well.
I wonder what it is about these two?
Anyway, little has happened on the reading/writing front for a bit of a while. Life certainly has its way of being very very demanding from time to time. However, the juices are flowing and things are shifting to where I can once again get back to doing what I love.
And I've realized an interesting thing: Every word I have ever written from the POV of one particular character (with the exception of the most recent two chapters) has to be scrapped. Yes, writings that go way back to the dark days of junior high school even are destined for the trash bin (which to a writer usually means stuffed away in a box somewhere because I imagine I'm not the only one who doesn't throw away anything I've ever written).
I'm actually excited. This character, a woman, has gone through so many transformations. I have struggled with her more than any character I have ever created. And she's long been one of my favorites. I realized, however, what I was doing wrong. Somehow she always ended up the victim of circumstance. All of my other characters bent others to their will whereas she was lost in the current all the time whether that was my intention or not.
Her scenes in my current WIP, which have her at a younger age than I have ever previously written her, ended up getting sidetracked in the same way. Luckily I caught it. And I started the opening of the WIP over, which not only brought this story that has been in my head for many decades alive, it finally brought her character out. It took my thick skull a long time to just let her be herself but I've finally learned to just get out of the way.
And now I am excited and nervous but I have to trust her. I'm putting her in quite the bind but I am confident she will show me how she will overcome it and take her first steps down the road I've always envisioned for her.
I never realized just how hard it would be to take a character from the beginning stages, to show how she can become who she becomes later in her life.
And its not one of those I'm a man trying to write a woman things, since I have plenty of female characters. Its just her...and actually her father now that I think about it. He's gone through quite the transformation as well.
I wonder what it is about these two?