I refuse to write the same story twice. I keep experimenting. I keep learning how to work. I’ve been at it pretty much 50 years, and I’m now beginning to learn how to do the job well.
Harlan Ellison

A while back, I’d written an opening scene but it just wasn’t working for me, or it was fine but I want more than fine. So I cocked my head and thought about it, thought out how I’d open and *why*. I thought about whose eyes I wanted the reader to see through and again *why*. So I scrapped the first opening, or rather, moved it back a bit and it totally freed everything (and my editor loved it so yay!). Sometimes, writing is like a puzzle, you have to put the edge pieces together but when they all look like sky, it takes a bit of cocking your head and patience as you work through it.

For me sometimes beginning a new book can be daunting, sometimes it’s the middle or the end that makes me insane. The last two projects I worked on were hard to start but once I hit a certain point, once I know my characters and where they need to journey to, things begin to ease in my head.

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?
Stephen King

I don’t necessarily mean it becomes easy to write that journey, but what I mean is I know the map and feel confident about the waypoints if not the scenic markers of the route. There aren’t hard and fast rules. There are things that work for us, and heck, not even on every project. So for me, in the big picture is about being flexible while still being rigid about the foundation - as in, it is necessary to write to be a writer - how I go about the final product is something I’m still working on.

You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.
Ursula K. LeGuin
…on writing

I remember thinking that at some point, it would get easier after I did it a few times. In some ways, it does. I know more now about how to heighten tension with a few sentences here and there. I know how to edit better, I know things that make me a better writer in a technical sense. But at the same time, the knowing means I feel more pressure to use all those tools to the best of my ability to write a book.

Each day I learn and grow. Each day I fail and succeed. Hopefully, the success will outweigh the failure. But in the end, it’s what I do, how I do it and that I continue forward.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 12:02 am and is filed under Lauren Dane. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.