I am back from my Welsh retreat, and it didn’t exactly go to plan…
Despite adding a good 10,000 words to the whodunnit, I am still a long distance from the finishing line. I was genuinely surprised to see how little movement those words gave me in the storyline.
I was seriously fed up after three days of writing and no sense of closing the story, but for my own peace of mind I tried to look on the bright side – if I don’t I will ultimately just put my pen down and walk away from my writing, and that can’t be an option.
So I shifted my perspective instead. It took a bit of effort and a glass or two of wine but I got there:
I have a proper plan showing story development; I am 10,000 words further along than I was, and they are purposeful words, not just space-fillers; I managed to enjoy the beautiful Welsh countryside and really have a mental time-out every day I was away, which was absolutely necessary. I got to be artistic with pencils, and creative with poetry, as well as work on the story – this gave me a chance to reconsider elements and re-write paragraphs that weren’t working as I intended. I got to spend quality time being peaceful with my husband, without the blare of the tv or the interruptions of work.
I also accepted that this is a growing story – from short story to novella, and from short form novella to long form. Possibly even a novel, by the time I’m through. The storyline carried me onwards, and is almost setting its own parameters.
Having hit the wall on this story a few times having it flow naturally was something of a relief and I’m not going to regret it. When this whodunnit came into my mind, it was a way to work through a problem I had in another story, getting the twists to work effectively. However, I’ve become much more wedded to this story, and am being much more tenacious about completing it, than I was the originator. Reading a few crime novels along the way has been invaluable, and has really opened my eyes to the potential in this genre, which is one I never previously cared for as a reader.
Now it is time to regroup and identify what needs to be done to get this story finished. As of tomorrow, the timesheet comes back into play as the key tool to carve out time to write, with a pragmatic and realistic target of about 1 hour per day.
I have a family event in Germany in a few weeks time so I will aim, once more, to be close to the conclusion by the time I go away. If I set enough targets, I’ll hit one eventually!
I am going to stop there because this is already a long post and I want to go back to the whodunnit for a little more time before I get myself ready for a return to the office. After all, I might not be on retreat any more but that is no reason not to retreat into my work!
Happy writing
EJ
🙂