The Groove (and how to regain it)

[ksmith]

An interesting discussion in kateelliott's LJ about getting back into the book groove after a layoff. It strikes me that it's like an athlete losing their conditioning--starting up again is painful, frustrating, a seemingly unending cycle of one stride forward/two strides back. You never think you're going to get it back. IT becomes that Grail, read about, spoken of in whispers, glimpsed, but never to be attained.

Then you tell yourself that you just did it a few months ago, dammit, so don't blasted tell me it isn't there.

My comment:

I've been going through that this past couple of weeks. I took several weeks off to do Holiday stuff/rest my post-first draft brain/adjust to editor's comments on manuscript and think of how to fix the book, which I thought was in pretty good shape going in.

For me, it has turned out to be like any physical activity. The brain is a muscle and I need to recondition it. I start out short, maybe a paragraph, and I sometimes I hate it and sometimes I don't. Later in the day, or the next day, a little more. A page. Two pages. Since I'm building the revision from parts of the old draft bound together with new stuff, it's not true ground floor, start-from-scratch, stare at a blank page writing. I think of it has having laid the footing for the house, built what I thought was a complete structure, then finding problems that mean knocking down selected walls,ripping out some but not all of the floor. It's an extremely drawn out and wasteful process, but it's mine and I should be resigned to it by now.

After a few days, a week, morning mind returns--I wake up thinking of tweaks and lines of dialogue and plot points. The book takes over more and more of my mind. Overall, I need to make the conscious start, which apparently triggers my brackbrain to wake up and start brewing stuff.


Part of my problem was that I did think Endgame was in great shape, and editor's comments threw me for a loop. I was at a loss as to how to redo this story. Thinking...thinking... Phone conversation with one writer friend helped me rethink the ending. Eventually, new approaches presented themselves. Now I read the old draft, and wonder how in the name of Scribulus the Writing God I let it out the door. How could I have thought it worked?

As I stated above, I have a very wasteful process. Wish to hell this wasn't the case, but I didn't have a choice in the matter.

Comments

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

I've run into this. I've had a variety of things going on in my life in the past year or so, but that's really no excuse. I've just had the most horrible time focusing on *anything*. I think your idea of treating it like physical conditioning is a good one. I'm going to have to keep that in mind.