You might remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned I was starting a complete rewrite of Incubus. Now, if you glance to the sidebar (—–>), you will notice that the word-count ticker for Incubus is still completely empty. Hmmm. That does not match up.
What happened is I came across a period of this just isn’t working. For the first time, I actually wrote a rough outline for Incubus. It is very loose–just enough to keep me on track as I write. Once I finished the outline, however, I got stuck. I just had this nagging feeling that something isn’t right with this story. I tried to ignore it and just write, but for the life of me I just couldn’t get words out. I set back to the outline and tweaked it. I fiddled and played and rearranged and tweaked some more. I obsessed over that stupid outline for weeks! Weeks, I tell you. And all the while, not a single word was being written in the actual manuscript.
If you have been reading my blog for long enough, you already know that I am a big supporter of the Write Every Day camp. I really believe that I write better when I write daily (except Sundays when I just don’t) and think that writing every day is totally beneficial. But this damn outline was killing me! I had to change something.
So, I stopped working on it. In fact, I stopped writing altogether. It’s not that I got bitter and threw a tantrum and declared I would never write again or anything like that. I just took a mini-sabbatical from writing. For a few days, I didn’t look at my outline. I didn’t open the Incubus document on my computer. I tried my best to not even think about the story. Instead of fretting over Incubus, I lived life a little. Bubba and I took a long walk all over town. I read like a maniac, devouring books left and right. We took a nice quiet drive around the countryside; we went out to dinner; we watched some movies. For a few days, I put Incubus and writing out of my mind and just lived.
Then something amazing happened. I was sitting in church yesterday afternoon, listening to a talk, when it hit me! The solution to my problem was right in front of me, and I knew how to fix what was broken with Incubus. I hadn’t been thinking about my book. In fact, I was trying my best to listen to the speaker without grumbling about the fact that starting church at 1:00PM is about the worst thing ever! But, my subconscious was hard at work, and when I was least expecting it–bam!–there was my answer.
And so, in this process, I have learned something valuable: while I have to do the hard work to get my books written, sometimes all the hard work in the world will not help me. Sometimes I need to let go of that work and just enjoy my life for a while. Sometimes the answers do not come when I work hard–they come when I live fully.
4 Comments
I had a sabbatical last 3 months one time and if I remember correctly it was YOU who kept saying just sit down and write whatever comes out.
Maybe now you get what I was going through?
Yeah. But I still hold to that method after a certain amount of time. I allowed myself a couple days. After too long, I still think writing anything is better than not.
It just goes to show how different writing styles can be.
This is true!