The Malady

I absolutely love writing my current short story. You wouldn't know it by how seldom I seem to be making progress, but I'm falling prey to something I've warned others about countless times and, if I'm being honest, today's blog is a way of forcing myself to address that.

You see, I have this nasty habit of getting on a roll with my writing, then pausing, just for the briefest second, to contemplate the most dreaded question a writer can ask: What if? I've got everything planned out, I have motivations and personalities set down, I'm ready to go. I'm knocking out words, pushing 1k, 2k, 3k if I'm feeling really froggy. Then it happens.

I start looking at a certain character and I wonder "would they actually do that?" "Perhaps it would be better if the did this instead." And of course that starts a chain reaction, a butterfly effect of prose and plot, if you will. Because, you realize, that is she does do that instead, well, then obviously that means she won't be over here when the time comes for the big reveal. And that means that he won't have a chance to see her commit a heinous act that forever changes his feelings about her. 

This means that now I have to stop writing to figure out how this all works. I need to think. And thinking leads to drifting. And drifting leads to YouTube videos about medieval armor vs modern bullets. And eventually old episodes of DS9 that I dissect for no reason. And maybe an episode or two of Aggretsuko. You get the idea.

Yeah, I know it's not a great excuse, but dammit, it's mine. And a lot of other writers. Yeah, it's a pretty common malady. But, now that I've put my shame out there, maybe I'll actually do something about it. 

​DFTBA