Tue 8 Mar 2011
It shrinks, it grows, but at least it doesn’t stay the same
Posted by PJ under dreams and dreamtime, stories, venus in transit, WIP, writing
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The WIP in rewrites was at first losing words at a good rate, and I was pleased about that. Getting rid of excess, making things clean. I actually like rewrites, perverse creature that I am. Structural problems, however, made it necessary for me to add new material and so I’ve written three new scenes and I will be adding more. Deleting and rearranging more, too, but the word count is currently larger than when I started. Not as large as the first bloated draft, but growing. I am not too worried about this. I have to get the structure, story, and character stuff right first, then I can worry about slimming. There will be at least one more draft for hammering that out.
I’m only on chapter 8, though I’ve been at it a month. It’s taking forever because my writing time is so limited these days. The only block of time I can count on is my lunch hour at work Monday through Friday. Weekends are completely absorbed with errands and chores and by evening I’m so trashed all I can do is sit it the chair, drool, and try not to fall asleep. Weeknights are often the same. I feel like I’m having to steal time for the creativity, and I’m hoping that when things regularize, my creative time-space will expand again.
At least I still have words. I was worried for a time that I’d used them all up. Things aren’t as fecund as they used to be, but I still have something.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve told myself bedtime stories: little storylets to help me drift into sleep; sometimes multi-pronged epics that I’ve been telling myself for years, often too silly to actually commit to the page, but fun and comforting all the same. These days, I fall into bed and I’m either immediately asleep or my mind is full of things to do, or worries, or…anything but stories. I can think of only one other period in my life when I didn’t tell myself bedtime stories. It was during that four or five year-long writers’ block I had. As soon as the bedtime stories started again, I began writing again, so there is something fundamental about my process involved in those dreamy tales.
I still have words. I still have words. I must remember that. Some day I may have time again, and I may have hypnogogic yarns to lull me into dreams, and oh yes, I may have dreams again, even dreams that are fit to put on the page.
