more good days than bad days
For the past week, I've been stuck on an important piece of writing -- the difficulty exacerbated, in this instance, by the limited word count: I'm a rambler, and though I do always try to revise my formal writing to a state of acceptable concision, word limits annoy and unnerve me. The submission deadline is approaching, and my anxiety levels have been rising accordingly. I've been plugging away at this thing every day, realizing slowly that I need to delete paragraphs, move paragraphs, preview this theme, follow up on that idea. The draft has been getting longer and longer as I try new ways to phrase explanations and assertions and then dither about which one's best. I haven't always been able to produce coherent sentences; sometimes I just add notes. When I opened the file this morning, the draft was an ugly sprawling mess.
But I went back and re-read my most trusted reader's latest feedback, and I finally saw what she was getting at, and it showed me the start of a path through the mess. Two hours of work later, the draft is finally taking shape: it has a clear statement of purpose, a concrete proposal, a meaningful development of ideas, a strong conclusion. And it sounds like me: wry, sometimes cranky, but fundamentally optimistic.
What I have to remember is that this is not a miracle, not mere inspiration; this is the logical if too often delayed outcome of spending time with my writing, working on it every day, working on it even when I feel hopeless about it, and then letting myself see it from a new perspective, change it, let go of what I thought my point was when I discover what my point really is. What I have to remember is that all the bad days become good days once I find out what they were for, what they were teaching me.
It's slow, and it's frustrating, but it's the only way I ever get this work done.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
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But I went back and re-read my most trusted reader's latest feedback, and I finally saw what she was getting at, and it showed me the start of a path through the mess. Two hours of work later, the draft is finally taking shape: it has a clear statement of purpose, a concrete proposal, a meaningful development of ideas, a strong conclusion. And it sounds like me: wry, sometimes cranky, but fundamentally optimistic.
What I have to remember is that this is not a miracle, not mere inspiration; this is the logical if too often delayed outcome of spending time with my writing, working on it every day, working on it even when I feel hopeless about it, and then letting myself see it from a new perspective, change it, let go of what I thought my point was when I discover what my point really is. What I have to remember is that all the bad days become good days once I find out what they were for, what they were teaching me.
It's slow, and it's frustrating, but it's the only way I ever get this work done.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth