Author: jrushing1

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Heyo!

So, It’s been awhile. In that span, after some significant globe-trotting (info in future post), I’ve found myself in a new  town, in a new country, and with a whole new palette on which to draw inspiration. Thanks to my wife’s new transfer, I’ve transitioned from the tattered party dress of Paris to Zürich. A town as crisp as the suits within and the mountain air that surrounds it.  There’s a charm here. One that fits my personality a bit better.

The landscape is also a better fit. Hikes, mountains, lakes, and forest. This is my kind place. Plus, the Swiss eat rösti, which is essentially a better version of hash browns you eat with beer and sausage, among other things.  Hard to pass that up.

I’m still well into the set up phase and will be for a while (move-in isn’t until May 1st). Part of the set up includes getting on a blogging schedule. Stay tuned for more posts soon.

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Okay, so, you started writing a novel. Maybe it’s your first, maybe not. Either way, at some point a mind nugget erupted deep in your psyche, giving you visions. Scenes from an epic story burst forth in Technicolor. Scenes that you, you personally, must write.

You put pen to paper or more likely, fingers to keys and pound out line after line with enthusiasm and gusto. The story rolls out in front of you like a winding mountain road bathed in the golden light of a spring evening. As the words flow you begin to analyze what you’ve created. Self critique is natural and inevitable. You critique both what you’ve already written and what’s to come. Though you still have much to write, the end is in sight and you want to make sure that it is indeed where you want to go.

There, in the distance, past towering sequoia and a carpet of lush sword fern, you spy your vision of the end. The grand conclusion to your magnum opus. You squint to see what your vision holds. Originally, you envisioned a moss-covered, flat rock overlooking a vast canyon with cascading waterfalls and a river that glistens like sapphires. That’s the ending your story deserves. That’s the ending you desire.

Instead, the golden light illuminates the winding road as it dead ends into the cul-de-sac of an RV park.  Wait, what? This isn’t right. It can’t be right. Is your story doomed?

Maybe. Before the horror begins to set in, the first thing, I think, is to talk to somebody you trust and get their honest opinion. Let their fresh eyes and mind assess your ending. We as writers often struggle to be objective about our own ideas. Sometimes that disappointing vision at the end of the road is just a mirage. Our satisfying ending still awaits. Our minds may just be playing tricks on us. If so, we must forge ahead to where the promised land awaits.

Or, maybe our confidant will confirm that our story really does end in that RV park and that if we don’t alter course, our story will end with canned chili and the din of ten inch tv screens tuned into game shows. If this is the case, it’s time to pull into a gas station or motel and work out a brand new route. That route may come quickly or need a lot of planning but there is always better route.

Our story map holds many roads that we can travel.   We just need to be sure that our original road is indeed wrong before we make a change. It would be a shame to let a trick of the eye ruin a beautiful trip.

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Forgive me writers for I have sinned.

I, after a lot of soul-searching, decided to shelve a work in progress, at least for the time being.

One of the most common rules in the deep and muddy mire that is writing advice is to finish what you start. While I am on board with this statement in theory, I’ve found myself unable, or more accurately, unwilling to follow it.

I was 40,000+ words into a novel that I’m very proud of. The concepts, characters and world I’ve built mean a lot to me. Within what I had written, I felt I had developed something that has to potential to be great. The problem was that I’d spent way too long trying to write the story in a way that lives up to what I know it could be. The foundation was solid and the tangled web of intrigue was well tangled but every time I tried to untangle those knots, my own reactions to those resolutions were lackluster. What would my readers think if I couldn’t even wow myself?

My motivation to write fell to near nothing. To top it all off, I had another story idea that kept begging to be written like a little annoying brain baby fussing for attention. The story planning  for this brain baby was such that I could start at any time but I was holding off until I finished my struggling novel. I was supposed to finish what I started. It’s the writer’s way.

Yet, another golden rule of writing is that you have to write… and I wasn’t.  I couldn’t motivate myself to lay down line after line of bullshit when I knew I would have to scrape it all back off when I finally found inspiration. I was frozen.

“Finish what thou start-eth”  was blocking “writer, thou shalt write” and I was left with a decision. Stick with the current project and continue to break both rules or sacrifice one to save the other. I chose sacrifice.

Here’s hoping it was the right decision. It feels right…so far.