Is it only me?

[Clio]

I need sympathy, fellow sufferers. I have spent all my writing time today working on a zillion rewritings and tweakings of my first page. I have taken hours over hitting just the right note: not too much background; plonking my lady right in the middle of her first conflict; setting time and place without overdoing it - all the usual stuff. Insanity is setting in. I find myself agonising over a single word or comma. So - I've put in sight, smell, touch etc - help - there's no noise! There should be noise. She's in a noisy setting. Is it enough to say 'the streets were noisy'? No, of course not. Whenever I finish a paragraph and sit back with a grin of satisfaction, by the time I've brewed yet another coffee and returned to the screen, I've gone off it all again.

My shortish opening chapter builds to an explosive climax; I want it to have impact, and I think the final scene makes the grade - just. But no matter what I do, I can't get the right tone for the opening. Ggrrrh.

So - the question I'm asking is: at just what point do you all decide to move on from the bit that's not working and return to it later? Or are there other stubborn devils like me out there who keep on and on until every word shines?

Your thoughts, kind souls.

[NeuroFizz]

Post it on Share Your Work and get on with the next chapter. It sounds like it's time to get some feedback. Otherwise you may continue to spin your wheels without gaining much traction.

[dempsey]

I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.

When that happens, walk away.

[Sunshine13]

I agree, take a break, as much as I tend not to listen to my own advice, it's usually best. SYW idea isn't bad either, post it up there, then move on, collect what people suggest, but wait before going back to it just to give yourself a break.

[Gabriel]

Dempsey's hit the nail on the head. We all get to that point at one time or another, the ole dancing comma. The opinions of others may help you, as Neurofizz suggests. SYW is your friend. :)

[Clio]

Thanks for the suggestions - and Dempsey, I'm glad to see that I'm in good company with my comma fixation!

NeuroFizz - Ironically enough, I was reshaping the first chapter before submitting it to SYW - but I'd have been better leaving it as it was. I'm in a total bloody mess now - lol.

Not to worry, I'll skip it and return. As for the SYW board, I'll post something that I'm a bit happier with and see what everyone makes of it.

[Karen Duvall]

I understand, Clio. I tend to obsess over first drafts myself, but I actually find it calming. I can accept that my pages aren't perfect and move on, but I still have to wrestle with it a while before I'm ready to write the next scene or chapter. I think the writing process is different for everyone. Do whatever you're most comfortable with.

[2Wheels]

I'm with the take a break, gain some space and perspective crowd.

[polarqueen]

I totally understand what you mean! I don't write fulltime, and take large breaks between when I work on my stuff (i.e. - months) but last time I was gungho I wrote 25000 words and an ending, couldn't figure out what to do with the characters so that they could get to the ending, and then just spent a week and a half agonzing over stuff like word choice and grammer in the first segment instead of plotting!

[IdiotsRUs]

I'd also say take a break - not from writing or this WIP, but from this scene.

If you're in first draft there will be a point later on where you think *aha I must put in a pointer to that in chapter one* in which case you'll have to edit all over again anyway

If this isn't your first draft you've just burnt yourself out with this scene. Edit the rest and come back to this when you're feeling excited about the whole project.

[tehuti88]

Well, seeing as I don't rewrite or revise, I have to get it right (as right as I can) the first time. And I don't believe in moving on to another part if the current part isn't working, because my stories are long and it would be too easy to derail and have to go back and rework earlier parts to fit the newer parts; OR I might end up writing all the easy stuff first and leaving all the hard stuff for later and making a huge mess of it all. I work best in a linear fashion. So I honestly can't move on to something else in a story if something isn't working out. I have to sit there and work it out before moving on. Maybe I'll avoid working on it (as I'm doing now), or work on a different story, but when I go to THAT particular story, I have to address the problem issue upfront.

I'm the same way with everything else in life, I just realized. I can't just walk away if something isn't resolved. It wears at my brain and I have to RESOLVE IT. If I want to go online to do something and the Net connection is acting up, do I wait until later to try? No. I want to go online at THAT moment, damn it, so I will sit there and redial and redial and redial and throw a hissy fit that it's not working because I planned to do it now so I WILL DO IT NOW NO MATTER HOW FURIOUS I GET OR HOW MUCH I DON'T FEEL LIKE GOING ONLINE ANYMORE.

*cough*

I admit this isn't very healthy. Naturally, since stuff acts up a lot, I throw lots of fits. :o

[Clio]

I'm the same way with everything else in life, I just realized. I can't just walk away if something isn't resolved. It wears at my brain and I have to RESOLVE IT. If I want to go online to do something and the Net connection is acting up, do I wait until later to try? No. I want to go online at THAT moment, damn it, so I will sit there and redial and redial and redial and throw a hissy fit that it's not working because I planned to do it now so I WILL DO IT NOW NO MATTER HOW FURIOUS I GET OR HOW MUCH I DON'T FEEL LIKE GOING ONLINE ANYMORE.


I think we are children of the same womb! You should see me swearing at the Guardian crossword on a Saturday. That last clue - dammit! I hate things beating me. And I sympathise with the frustration of trying to get online.

But I've taken the majority advice tonight, tehuti, and I am now chilling out with a vodka and coke, and trying to beat Spider Solitaire with two suits......;)

[scribbler1382]

[3 pages of cool stuff goes here]

[chevbrock]

I am sending cyber chocolate and scotch.

[Aschenbach]

I may be a lone voice in saying don't post on SYW yet. Until you have a firm idea what you want your scene to say, keeping it to yourself might be a good idea.
You will get lots of well meaning and intelligent suggestions on SYW but they might lead you to take your scene down a path you hadn't intended, and then it will never feel right.

I am in a similar situation, in the last three days I have been agonising over one paragraph, the introductory scene of a short story. Very frustrating, but I needed to work through it alone to really find the essence of what I meant to write about.
Pretentious? Probably. But it has to feel right for you first. Of course, taking beta's and critiquer's opinions is essential, but only after you have finished and revised a lot (imo). Not right at the start.

[Phaeal]

If it's your first draft, let it go and keep writing, as fast as possible. Speed is the only way to shake the Inner Editor aka Critical Shoulder Monkey who's clinging to your back, making you doubt yourself, and bringing the project to a screeching halt. Until you've made the whole journey, you won't know how to perfect the opening.

[Feidb]

I just couldn't work that way. When I get an inspiration, I just go for it and worry about the details later. If I were to stop and make sure every word was perfect, I'd forget what I was writing about by the end of the first sentence!

The better I get, the less major changes I have to go back and fix, but the whole idea is to get the main story down first.

Feidb

[Bufty]

I think unpolished submissions are a menace in SYW.

Not because the folk in SYW don't wish to help, but critting to any degree is time consuming and critters should not be expected to spend more time on a submission than the writer may appear to have done.

If a rough draft is posted in SYW it could be argued it is advisable not to mention it's a draft but to specify that it is only a particular issue that requires clarification or suggestions.

The danger there is that it is critted as if it were polished and the comments will then be blunt and deservedly so.

There are other Forums -like this one, and The Sandbox - for discussing and solving specific issues.

And, apart from anything else, if the standard was kept high in SYW many newcomers would find a lot of their ordinary questions answered simply by visiting that Forum and browsing.

[Nateskate]

I need sympathy, fellow sufferers.

You have my sympathy. Lol, trying to get my opening right led to entire books!!! And I'm not kidding.

My current series was finished a number of years ago. But I feared there was way too much back story, so I wrote a 2 book "Silmarillion-type" novel. That was just plain nuts to do, but in retrospect it gave me such an understanding of the inner workings of my Universe, that in rewrites of the current series, I was able to make it ten times stronger.

But in my edits, I'll go over them with a fresh pair of eyes the next day, and the next, and the next- at least in some places. Whenever I hit a place where the story just flows, I'm elated. But there are those places that a few page edit can drag on for more than a week. I hate those parts.

It should get easier though. Lol. I'm reading the second Thomas Covenant series. The first novel of his second series is so much stronger than that of his first, it seems written by a different person.