on hesitation and letting it all be crap

i think it's been almost a month since i wrote anything on my sequel. or it seems like a month. most likely it's only been three weeks. i do remember posting something about hitting a wall. it was back in March. you can read it here if you care to.

that was back at 45,000 words. 30,000 words later, i hit another wall. this time i think i know why.

---30,000 carefully planned words seem to be my brain's limit. after that, it says, 'Hey you! i need a serious break from this 2nd drafting stuff. i'm bored to death. let me play with a first draft of anything or i'm not cooperating anymore.'

---once i get past the 1st draft of whatever my brain played with, it's still hard to get back to my 2nd draft. i think that's because i'm hesitating. i want my words to be perfect. it's a 2nd draft, so i expect my prose to be better than it would be in a 1st draft.

so i need to remember this:

“Every time we hesitate to begin for fear of failing or seeming frivolous, we must fill that moment of hesitation with prayer. Then we must follow that prayer with action, with doing something, anything that will get us moving forward in the practice of our art.” ~ Janice Elsheimer

i always say that getting the story moving again is like trying to push start my Ford Excursion uphill. i need to let the words be 1st draft words. let them be lousy. let them be crap. save the perfectionism for the 3rd draft.

so on that note, i'm going to post this somewhere.



(thanks go to Vicki Gaines for the quote and Abby Annis for the button.)