Give it time

One of the hardest things to do, at least for me, is to get distance from a story.   While writing, I am very “into” the story and my mind jumps ahead while my fingers hurry to catch up.  I miss things or miss type things, yet in my head they are just fine because I know what SHOULD be in there.

I was working my way through what I have written in Dragon Masque last night and I was abhorred at the missed words, wrong words, or just plain wrong ideas I had typed out previously.  As I read, I changed most of them but I know a few more linger. 

A lot of this is because I want to put the idea on the page before it pops like a soap-bubble and I lose my thoughts.  I have a lot of distractions in my life and the few short hours a day I can write are often eaten up by other things.  So when I do get to writing, I tend to write hard and fast, a quickie just to get it on the page.  Of course I miss things, ideas, words and thought fragments litter my first drafts.  I often cringe when I get back to it, like I did last night.

It leaves a lot of clean up for me later.  I do not write outlines, I just am not able to work with them efficiently.  I figure out the story as I write, messy as it is.   You might say it is more like an archeological dig than building a structure.  When I write, I get deeper into the surface. But this works for me. I am not limited to straight ideas and a line that leads from point A to B. 

I have to put a story up for at least a week to find some of my problems.  Other issues take two or more.  I hope I am getting better at finding them. At least I am finding more issues and it is easier to fix them.