I find myself at a bit of a mental cross-roads these days when it comes to my writing. Part of this is because I still consider myself a panster – when I’m writing, I’ve got my daily word count and I attempt to meet it or do better and life is good.
But with this latest book, I’m having to do more research and more planning, and even though its so important to the story as a whole, I still feel guilty if I’m not actually putting words on the page. (Never mind that it does me no good to write something that I’ll have to rework heavily later on because it will be out of sync with the plotting later.)
Not sure what my issue is, quite frankly. Plotting is new for me and it’s hard to give myself the time to *do* it. I suspect I’m afraid I’ll end up using it as an excuse to not write. “Hmm, can’t write today, I need to come up with the entire societal structure of the underground mole dwelling people who are only mentioned in passing.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is why a lot of epic fantasy novels never actually get written, honestly. It’s probably more fun to think of all the little odds and ends that make up a world and its people than it is to try to construct the story through it.
I’ve been giving myself a bit of a writing break the last few weeks – there’s been a lot of personal stuff that has needed attention. As much as I enjoy writing, there *are* other things in my life that take precedence sometimes.
I’m not taking a “creative” hiatus, however – I’m working on the webcomic (Page 7 of Fox & Willow up today!) , and I’ve got ideas percolating for the Womanthology issue and a Melanie short story for an upcoming anthology. Percolation is very important for me.
But I did finally sit down this weekend and start writing again. Not a huge amount and I’m still trying to flesh out some of the world building ideas as I go, but mental break or not, writers have to write.
It felt pretty good.
