The Act of Writing

I'm amazing at how difficult it can be to write.  It is of course a simple matter of typing or writing down your thoughts, the story in your head.  However, it gets to be so much more complex when you are writing for an audience.  Of course there is the grammar and punctuation to consider, but even more than that it's about making sure the story is readable, interesting, and makes sense. It has to be believable within context, meaning everything must follow the same rules within the same story.  Otherwise it just becomes nonsense and most people will not bother to read it.

I sit reading over what I have written, the first draft, the prewrite.  The story is good but the writing isn't, yet.  When I write the prewrite, my goal is just to get the story down, to get it finished so that I don't get lost or forget.  So while I'm reading what I have wrote, I know that parts are really bad writing and that I need to fix them...that's where it gets hard.  How do I make it better? How do I tie in what is written on page 10 with what's going on with pages 12-20?  I have rewritten one section, only to have another one no longer make sense with the new change...How to reconcile the two.

I have a hard time deleting parts of a story I worked hard on, removing phrases or sentences that I thought were particularly.  So editing is a lot of fits and starts.  A lot of staring off trying to picture what I've wrote, what I want to write.  A lot of rereading the same lines over and over, hoping the answer will come to me.

I love to write, but I have to say this process is frustrating sometimes.  Usually when I am faced with a problem and I don't know how to fix it I will Google it.  But this is something that can't be Googled.  This is something that I can only do by myself.  There is a lot of frustration and doubt that comes with it, but I have to say, once I have solved the problem and really great writing sits in front of me, I am incredibly proud of myself.