The writing hasn't been going too well :(

https://twitter.com/SilencioBarnes/statuses/185392799548583936

When I started, I was on a small vacation from work. Unfortunately, when I started back up at the 9 to 5, the writing stagnated. I did do a lot of thinking about my story, and that's good. But thinking about it ain't writing it.

It's not just the regular job though. I heard several times that for writers, especially discovery writers, the story might not make itself apparent until you are several thousands of words in. I can attest to that and say it is absolutely true. Approaching the 30,000-word mark, I started to finally see the beginning of the shape of my story. That disturbed me...greatly.

https://twitter.com/SilencioBarnes/statuses/188007978258014209

https://twitter.com/SilencioBarnes/statuses/188100768786690048

30,000 words is a lot of words. I did not want to think that all of this writing was for nothing. Keep in mind that I said that I am only just STARTING to see the SHAPE of my story.

That means I have 30,000 words that are pretty much worthless. And it also means that I hit a stumbling block. Everything in me wants me to just start the whole thing over from the beginning with all of the changes I need to make. I need to make my main character more of a dick. I need to start further back in the timeline than I initially started with. I need to set up the situation in a completely different way than I originally intended. I need to start from scratch.

But all of the masters have told me that I need to keep going forward. I need to finish this rough draft.

Two things here: First is that statement about going back in the timeline and the other is the idea of a rough draft.

Timeline. A constant failure of mines is thinking too far back. Stories are supposed to begin when something changes. Unfortunately, I tend to think of everything in epic scale. For instance: I had an idea for an epic fantasy series. I started writing it as I do most things. No forethought, just sit down, start typing, and see what comes out. Well, once I started typing, I started thinking of all the things that happened to lead up to that current moment. I had a female protagonist, but then I thought about her parents. What was it about them that made her who and what she was? Well, thinking of her parents led me to conjuring up an entire epic fantasy series dealing with her father and his cousin. Yes...a whole trilogy.

Plotting out that series in my mind, I THEN had an idea for an epic fantasy SERIES that dealt with the progenitor of one of the secondary characters. This would be a series that took place in the far distant past. So I started thinking on that. Overwhelmed by it all, I just gave up altogether, but I never stopped thinking about all three epic storylines. But do you see the utter madness of it? That's why in my previous post, I said I realized that I was not ready for the epic fantasy.

And this problem of mines has come back to haunt me. Once I started realizing the shape and path of my current story, my mind just started adding to it and adding to it. I wanted this to be a single book with a beginning, middle and end. But the more I think about it and the more I create, the more there is to add. I am already thinking about setting up things that will not bear any fruit until book 3 or 4. But I haven't even made my way through book 1 yet! It makes me want to just stop altogether.

The other thing is the rough draft. From what I can see, the terms “first” and “rough” are interchangeable. But I'm starting to suspect that discovery writers always have the burden of writing at least one extra draft. I know that when I make it through this very rough draft, it is probably not going to be anything like a coherent story. This is my rough draft. When I'm done, I'll have to turn it into my first draft. Once I do that,