What’s left of my mind…

I changed to a new blog theme for about ten minutes and decided I couldn’t stand to use it until it’s undergone extensive editing. I have no idea if I’m going to be able to properly edit the parts that need it—without enough PHP and WordPress know-how at least—which pretty much means it’ll be another five years before I MIGHT get it changed.

Anyhoozits…

When I started writing so many…many…many years ago, I wrote in a linear fashion. I started at the beginning and wrote through to the end. Or…as far as I could get before I got stuck/lost interest/realized it was going nowhere/whathaveyou. And this worked. To an extent. But even when a story had a clear plot and path to follow, I so rarely actually finished a project because inevitably I would get stuck on one little piece that I couldn’t get past, and the whole thing would derail.

I would have ideas and plenty to write beyond that part I was stuck on, but I spent so much time STUCK on that one part, even if I managed to eventually work past it, I’d lose those other ideas because I didn’t write them down when I had them.

Eventually I did learn to write those things down. I’d keep up with the linear timeline, but fill up separate documents with these other ideas for later in the story. Then when I got to that point, I could piece in what I’d already written. In theory at least. It kind of worked. I wasn’t losing the ideas into the black abyss of my brain quite so much, but now I had several dozen other documents to sort through to find what I needed when I needed it. And that was usually a disaster, because when I needed a specific scene, it would take forever to find it—if I could find it at all. I’d spend a whole lot of time looking for something in particular, unable to find it, and then question myself if I ever actually even wrote it down in the first place.

That was when I started lumping everything for a given story into one document. I’d write the ideas as they came and everything would be right there when I needed it. If there was something that I wasn’t sure really belonged in the main story (back story/side story/whathaveyou story) I’d put it in a separate document, but everything else was written in the main document. I wasn’t losing as much material, but I was screwing myself in a whole new way. I’d write the ideas as they came. But they were also placed in the order they came to me. So reading back through, the scenes jumped all over the timeline and if there were pieces that belonged next to each other—but hadn’t been written in that order—I had to scroll through pages and pages of text to find it.

From there I learned to keep things organized by the timeline. I still wrote scenes as they came, but I filled them in, in between other scenes where they actually belonged in the overall story. I write out of order, but reading back through the document, everything happens in the time it’s supposed to. There are huge holes in the narrative, but the general timeline is there.

And this is how I’ve been maintaining for several years now. It works for me and my disjointed brain. I’m still not finishing things, but I’m getting a hell of a lot more writing done. And if I get completely stuck on a given project, I move to a different one entirely that allows me to keep writing. I might have twenty-some active projects at any given time, but at least I’m not staring at a blinking cursor, completely paralyzed by my inability to figure out whatever it is I’m stuck on in a specific story.

I could guess my writing methods would cause other writers to break out in hives from the stress of it all. But as erratic as it is—it WORKS for me. I’m WRITING. It might be rough, fantastic, or completely inane, but I’m writing.

Which brings us to Ben and Marina.

OH BIG SURPRISE.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve written anything new on this project, but even with everything else I find myself working on, this one is constantly on the brain. I’ve reached a point with this project that I have most of the key plot points written. They might not be fully hashed out, but they’re there. There are just gaping holes in the narrative that need to be filled in to connect all of those points together. Narrative is the bane of my existence. It’s the one thing I struggle most with. Especially when it comes to figuring out how much or how little information I actually need on any given plot detail. I have so much information on the lives of these characters built up in my head, I have a difficult time discerning what is actually relevant to the story and what is just for my own demented entertainment.

I think I’ve reached a point with this project where I need to shift back to a more linear process. I need to start at the beginning and work through to fill in the missing information and weed out anything that seems excessive. I keep trying to jump around the timeline to fill in the gaps and I find myself getting lost in the process. Writing out of order gets the bulk of the story on the page, but making it coherent and cohesive is going to require following the actual timeline.

It’s just a matter of finding the focus I need to get it done.

And that is the biggest hurdle of them all.

As Long As I’m With You
Ingram Hill

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