Inching through the tunnel ...

Taking a break from importing, editing and labelling six thousand and four photographs of rocks, I decided to do some work today. After doing actual work-work this morning, I went to the new(ish) coffee shop down the street (not a Starbucks) to work on my story. I am happy and somewhat shocked to report that I wrote 1,229 new words. This is such a strange and interesting process. At this point in the game I feel as though I'm living my characters' lives in real time and, like them, have no idea what the future holds. My writing coach believes in forging ahead, not mapping everything out and self-editing. Editing stunts the creative process, she says, and I understand what she means. She gives me deadlines and I do my best to meet them, with the goal of getting to the first ending. Because there will be a whole lot of editing if/when I meet my goal. But, she points out that it's a lot easier to shape a relatively complete draft than it is scene-by-scene without a road map. I suppose perhaps it's somewhat like a sculptor chipping away at a slab of marble to reveal the ballerina that he didn't know was inside. "I suppose perhaps it's somewhat ..." How's that for commitment?

I don't yet know the whole story. I know aspects of it, certainly, and I know my characters and their backgrounds reasonably well but the direction? Not sure. Actually that's not true. I know roughly how I think it will end ... it's all the stuff from a to z that I'm unclear about. Because of the surprises that have arisen thus far, I might logically change the title I've used since I wrote bits of the first paragraph two years ago. This paragraph sat on an endless white page, untouched, until I revisited it in April.

The forging-ahead process is both enlightening and claustrophobic ... like inching through the Lincoln Tunnel knowing you'll most likely see the light at the end -- you're getting further, no matter how slowly. I am fully aware, by the way, that this may never be anything but a manuscript, but that's okay. I'm writing more than I've ever written these days, and it feels good.

You know what's strange? Since I added the Statistics feature to this whatever-you-want-to-call-it, I have had considerably fewer comments than I used to. Yet I see that people are visiting. Huh. Strange.

Hint, hint.

Pictures of the @#%# rocks coming soon.