So I added back an additional scene that I'd lopped off and grafted it to the ending. I'm still not 100% sure about it. But it seems to work better than where I'd originally left off and it was nice to retrieve some of those clever lines that I'd tossed away. (Thank goodness for saved drafts.) And now I'm already pondering ways to rewrite the returned lines into something a little more plausible than what I'd put down in the flurry of NaNo. I think I'll go do that now.
One of the common myths that stands between people and completed manuscripts is the myth of 'time.' I'm sure you've heard it. "If I just had the time , I'd be able to Write My Novel." But our time is a limited resource, consumed by forty-hour-a-week jobs with hour commutes each way and all the other obligations of the business of living. If only, one sighs, one could have time to oneself, time to write without all those pesky distractions, then one could finally write that novel that one has been promising oneself that one would, one day. One is, of course, bullshitting oneself. The beautiful thing that NaNoWriMo did for me--and, I'm sure for many others--is thoroughly debunk that myth. The raw material for the novel I'm trying to hammer into a publishable form was drafted in the space of two separate months of do-or-die typing (supplemented with some scribbling to allow me to keep the plot on track) while still holding down a job and everyt...
So I was doing my Three Daily Pages (most folks might know them as Morning Pages, but I'm not always up that early) and this strange and crazy thing poured out that I'm transcribing here for future reference. If you've ever done any kind of serious writing, it's a safe bet you've had to deal with The Thing In Your Head That Keeps Stopping You From Writing. There are a lot of names for it--Resistance, the Inner Critic, the Shitweasel. I sometimes call it the NoMonster. When I was writing this, the thing took on a persona I described as The Ugly Handsome Man. (I picture him as a blond guy in a suit with a face that's just a little too . . . tight, in some way.) This is a speech given by said Ugly Handsome Man, laying out the strategies to my various gremlins for stopping me from working on my current novel. I suspect these strategies may not be unique to my inner battles. I suggest a three-pronged strategy. Three lines of defense. I'd p...
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