I’m funnied out.
At least that’s how it felt up until about an hour ago.
I could relate funny stories over breakfast with my AP to the point of snort and immaturation (losing maturity with every passing minute), but transferring my funniness to paper was out of the question unless I could siphon the visuals from my brain on to the page. And I don’t think anyone’s invented such a device yet.
Today I literally stared at the screen, reading, rereading, looking, revising and fiddling with the dozen or so pages I had already written on one of my last chapters - the male profile. Even the title sucks.
In the last couple of days, I actually questioned whether I was going to toss the whole project into the fireplace and be done with it - except that I don’t have a fireplace and even if I did it’s summer so why would I burn a log?
Plus I have stuff on a jump drive so really it was a moot threat. I was just being a drama queen because it felt good. And writers aren’t allowed to have all those tantrums like movie stars unless you’re also working on a movie set and do something like throw a phone book at somebody because they changed your script AGAIN and nobody’s listening because nobody gets it and nobody cares because everyone wants things done their way in Hollywood. Sheesh.
But I digress.
I wrote six pages of opinions on the male profile until I realized something vitally important that changed everything...
Nobody gives a shit.
Once again, the truth of this statement hit me as I absentmindedly watched an episode of The Dog Whisperer, (laptop sitting where its name implies it should), and writing more crap than the backyard of a humane society when I heard Cesar Millan tell someone how utterly simple it was going to be to rehabilitate some vicious, cat-eating canine.
I thought wtf is he talking about, rehabilitate? Put the god damn dog down and be done with it!
Holy crap.
That’s what was wrong with my chapter. I forgot to keep it simple.
I looked up at Cesar with those white teeth and that faint leftover halo glow from his previous life as Saint Bernard, looked back down at my screen and promptly deleted eight pages of useless material.
Damn but it felt good.
In writer language, it’s called: killing your babies
Every writer develops an emotional attachment to the words he puts down on paper. The more he invests, the greater the attachment, until the thought of altering or deleting material - even when he knows it’s no damn good nor serves any purpose - becomes impossibly difficult.
You’ve birthed this new thing that can’t go on living because it doesn’t fit the purpose of your work and yet... you defend its right to be there by forcing it to fit in because you've invested so much you just can't let go.
And that spells disaster.
The only thing you can do... is kill it.
So I did.
Now I might actually stand a chance to get it right.
As for being done by the 1st of September? Not a chance.
I’ll give myself one more week.
Because there’s only one thing worse than killing your babies - meeting a deadline but handing in crap to 'git 'er done'.
I’ll keep you posted.
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