I’m Back (I think)

I wasn’t intending to be gone for so long. My original plan was to use the month of February to get a better handle on one or two of my writing projects. I got very little done in the way of writing.

The first week of last month I tried to work on a second draft of the one and only story I have finished a first draft of. Actually, I thought I was attempting to rewrite it because the first draft was more of just a skeleton version.

Now that six weeks have passed, I’m thinking the first definition, second draft, is probably closer to being right. A skeleton version of a story appeals to me now as a first draft. I won’t have to take much out of what I’ve already written and can add where more is needed in this next draft. Some writers do their creativity the opposite way, spilling everything into their first draft, then subtracting, condensing, and making the whole thing more concise in their later drafts. I wish I could be like them but I’m not, which means I probably will have more drafts that most writers.

Moreover, I’m going to have to spend some time reinserting the first draft in the yWriter. (Version 6 is out now, which addresses some issues I had with version 5.) This process will take some time. The auto-saved rtf files of the story don’t slip into the yWriter program that easily. I have to do each chapter separately and each files name must be changes to the name of the chapter it is. I have to do this with over 20 rtf files. Groan. Also, I need to read that first draft before starting on the second one. That’s what I learned the hard way that first week of last month.

Additionally, I’ve decided to take another stab at that dark story I had been working on in January. Now that I have the version 6 yWriter and have realize there are places in the program where I can do narrative outlines of the story, I can hopefully be better prepared for the actual writing of this project.

Are you wondering what I was doing since that first week of February passed? I spent the other three weeks of February and the first week of March being sick. I got the flu coupled with bronchitis. The flu lasted a little more that week. I slept almost 24 hours a day the first three days except when I’d have coughing fits from the bronchitis. I couldn’t eat anything during that time and for two more days. After that I could only handle Jello until the last week of February. I puttered around the house in a daze, usually ending up crashing on the sofa with a blanket wrapped around me, staring at the TV.

I guess I could have had a post published for last week but I was doing a little random exploring here in cyber space. I haven’t done that in years.

Something else has come up too that I haven’t had to deal with in the past. I am finding out that I am terrified by the thought of writing now. The arbitrary travel across the internet was my attempts to hide from writing. Sure, I enjoyed the romp but if I’m going to be truthful with myself, I must admit to the core distress I feel when I put my hands to the keyboard now.

Don’t come running to my rescue because I need to get past this reaction on my own. I’m a stark believer in doing things on my own if at all possible. Dealing with unfounded fears is one of those things I believe can be conquered alone.

 

post note: I have switched my publishing day of my posts to Monday.