Rewriting…
Is there Anything more Tedious?
Firstly, before I start hello to my new followers, thank you for being here. I have followed back those in the notification bar, if I missed you give me a nudge and I will make sure to follow you too.
Back to the point, Rewriting. You had a great idea, you scribbled it down, you loved it. you had it edited, maybe you had it published, maybe you put it in the file of completed work that will live out of sight for months to years. But eventually you have a new idea for that story. Something sparks in the brain and you desperately need to get these ideas out of your mind and on that shiny page… but and here’s the problem, this isn’t a shiny new page, this is a page littered with pretty words. You can’t just throw your ideas down and let them land where they may, you have to structure them, make sure they fit the story that’s already there. You move things, cut things, put the same thing back in again because maybe you were right the first time? And before you know it, all those ideas that were bursting out have runaway. They don’t want to be part of the annoying structure, they want to run, free, play games with empty pages, not fit, cut and alter themselves to fix something else.
Then you’re there, the writer, with a chopped up piece of work and ideas fleeing faster than you can get your butterfly net to keep them. You try to catch them, to tempt them back with chocolate and maybe a sneaky drink, you call to them seductively, then beg them desperately. PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME! I NEED YOU!
It all gets a bit tragic at this point…
You know, somewhere deep down that it will be worth it. I’m a writer, it’s meant to be hard. Then it becomes amazing. But when you’re sat there at 2am huddled over your laptop asking it questions as if it could possibly ever answer you, you start to think this isn’t worth it. You start thinking about all the easy hobbies and jobs you could have done, of all those happy people sound asleep thinking of things and not trying to turn them into stories, those happy, simpler creatures who appreciate the world. Those who don’t laugh at irony, and they don’t look at inanimate objects and wonder how best to describe them. Those happy people.
You could be one of those people… You could if you tried. You bargain with yourself. “Lets just try it and see“. but you give up in minutes because if you weren’t a writer you wouldn’t even be arguing with yourself in your head as if you can barter with yourself like a crazy person.
At this point you either give up, put it away or continue on desperately. But any good writer knows that ideas come when the brain is distracted. We watch films, read books, sleep, spend time with those creatures we call friends and family, all the while trying not to think about how we want inspiration to strike.
Then it comes. probably at an inconvenient moment, when you’re on the toilet, or in the hospital, or at your 9-5 job handling a million things and there isn’t a pen in sight to scribble them down. But eventually it happens and you’re back. You scribble and type furiously until its done. That old story is now a brand new polished piece of art work, you almost want to frame the beauty. and for a brief length of time you are the happiest writer in the world.
Until a new idea comes along…
