A Forced Break Was Just What I Needed
How Stepping Back Can Propel You Forward
I was sitting on the terrace at the Choc Dee Thai restaurant in Cologne. It was the last day of our family visitors’ vacation. Tomorrow, they would be flying home, but I think they did pretty well for an eleven-day holiday:
Amsterdam.
Keukenhof (look it up).
A tour of Zuid Limburg, The Netherlands. Including a visit to The American War Cemetery and Memorial at Margraten.
Maastricht.
Paris.
Cologne.
Amsterdam (again, before their flight).
I’ll be honest; it’s been exhausting. Tremendous fun but tiring. I’d expected a stack of ideas and inspiring notes I could use for the newsletter. But, apart from the War Cemetery visit, nothing leaped out.
Perhaps it will come to something soon.
The highlight of their visit for me was my niece’s mother-in-law’s reaction. Initially, she seemed unsure and timid, but she soon relaxed as she felt more at home. She and my wife quickly became very close.
Reflections
I haven’t written much in the last two weeks. Instead, I took an unplanned break, and it has done me a lot of good. I feel more relaxed and can focus on what I aim to achieve. Simply not forcing the pace is wonderful for my peace of mind.
I enjoy writing this newsletter, but it’s not the writing I’m itching to scratch. Fiction is the itch; I love to read Iain M Banks, Alastair Reynolds (no relation, and Peter F Hamilton, to name a few.
Perhaps an odd coincidence, as they are all British authors (or were in the case of Iain M Banks). Perhaps their writing style appeals to me as we share a common culture. Who knows?
I’ve recently been reading (listening to?) a lot of audiobooks, a relatively recent discovery that I’ve resisted until now. Don’t get me wrong; I much prefer reading, but the audiobook versions have allowed me to cram more into my busy schedule.
They have been an eye-opener for my writing. I see now that my developing fiction is flat and needs to be started again. The idea is sound, but the execution, so far, is lacking.
I’m not disheartened; after all, this is supposed to be a learning experience as well as a pleasure. I’m thinking again of the famous quote from Stephen King:
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.”
All is Not Lost
I’m not going to throw everything in the trash; some of the scenes already written are okay and can be salvaged. But rather than rescue them directly, I’ll use them as a cue to write the scene from scratch.
The, at first enforced but quickly became very welcome, break to look after our visitors has relaxed me enough to stand back and review with a cold eye. So, I guess I’ll be killing a few of my darlings.
I’m around ten thousand words into the project to put some perspective into things. It was not an insignificant investment, but fortunately, it was not entirely wasted. Although, as I said, it was flat and boring, if I’m being honest.
All is not lost, though. Listening to some of the masterworks recently has given me new directions to explore. Most notably, there are two things I’m lacking.
Character Development
First is character development. Unless a reader can identify with, not necessarily like, a character, they won’t become engaged enough to turn the proverbial page to find out what happens next. Characters are what drive a good story; they are the human interest that pushes us to the next page, the next chapter.
How often have you started reading a book only to be bored by page two? What do you do then? Persist and hope it gets better. Nope, most of us close the book and never return to it. We don’t want to risk wasting our time with characters that don’t speak to us in some way.
Setting the Scene
The second item I’m missing is the setting. More specifically, providing enough information about the settings for a reader to be able to fill in the blanks. That is, I need to provide a sufficient description of the setting for each scene so the reader can quickly construct a mental image of the scene.
This is a lot trickier than it sounds. We don’t want to bore the reader, but we must give them enough familiar reference points to build their mental picture. Getting this balance just right is not as easy as it sounds.
A description that is too detailed is boring, and a description that is not detailed enough is also boring.
Of course, everyone is different. What is a perfect scene-setting for one person may be either too verbose or too lacking in detail for another. Fortunately, readers can be forgiving up to a point. My feeling is to err on the side of verbosity, as readers can easily skip parts of the text that bore them. They may not even realize they are doing it.
Future Plans (maybe)
Enough said. I’ve got a lot of rework to do just to get to the point I thought I was at just a few weeks ago. Such is life.
For the future, I’m still considering serializing the work online. I know that quite a few authors have done this, so it’s nothing new. The fear of failure and rejection is the only thing stopping me (apart from not having anything ready for publication yet).
Then again, I’ll be sixty-four this July, so do I really care what people say or think all that much? Not really.
If nothing else, I’ll be getting a crash course on how to deal with criticism of my writing. Should be fun.
Final Thoughts
It’s funny how being forced to take some time out was exactly what I needed. Not that I felt that way at first. It was nice to revisit Paris; it had been a few years since the last time.
I’m happy we made our visitors feel completely relaxed and at home. I hope we can host them again next year or the year after that.
Perhaps we will see them in Thailand before then. I miss Bangkok.
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