Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Writing Is Easy and Fun for Me

This is a little mantra that comes back to me from time to time. I'm sure I've written about it before. 

(I just checked, and yes, I wrote about it and my guffawing high school English teacher in 2007.) 

"Writing is easy and fun for me," pops right into my head when I'm struggling. I'm currently struggling, and let me now enumerate the ways:

I'm working on a new idea and getting to know new characters. I'm writing lots of scenes that will hit the garbage can. You would think that knowing I'm going to throw it all away would free me, and in some ways, it does! But other times, it just feels daunting. Because I know I'll have to write 200,000 words before I land on the 90,000 right ones.

But, also, I worry that I'm not finding the right ideas or learning the right things about the characters or exploring the right facets of their personalities. Maybe I identified the wrong "five pivotal life moments" that I'm now excavating for the first of five or six main characters. Maybe I haven't gotten the right connections drawn between one character and another.

The young woman I'm writing about right now isn't coming to life in all the right ways yet. One problem is that her name is Felicia. I should probably change that immediately because #ByeFelicia.

I just paused the writing of this blog entry to watch a video about the origin of the expression "Bye Felicia." I had no idea, and it's possibly appropriative for me to use since it was originated by Ice Cube's character in the movie Friday.

So, this is a lot of struggle. Let's start with the easiest problem and rename Felicia. I'm going to switch it right now to Victoria. Do you think that'll help?

I'll keep you posted.

2 comments:

LH said...

So many things to think about in this novel writing world of yours.
I always enjoy when you write about your process.

I didn't know about #ByeFelicia, but I wasn't crazy about the name anyway.

Victoria makes me think of Queen Victoria.

But that's probably just me. And maybe that's a good thing. I have just read that she was shorter than 5 feet tall, but had a towering presence.

KC said...

I'm happy to know these factoids about Queen Vic!