It Just Happens
I’m not a big believer in the “this one wrote itself” philosophy. Sure, some books are easier to write than others. Some characters crystallize in your head better than others. Some plots flow while others bumble around. Some pages go from mind to keyboard with a great deal less profanity and hair-pulling than others. But the reality is the words don’t get on the page without a writer putting them there. The computer doesn’t write books. We do.
Despite that, there are these moments. The ones where the writing is hard, the words won’t come, it all reads like crap when you try to revise it…and then it happens. You read over something you wrote days or weeks of even months ago and you don’t remember writing the words. Ever have that happen? You go along and say, “wait, when did I write that?” and then realize what you came up with is pretty good. Whether you’re a plotter or pantser, you stumble across those lines. Even when you felt as if you were fighting every word, starting every sentence with “she” and only using “to be” verbs, you managed to come up with something great. Something that fit and came from you without having to dissect every syllable. That’s the It moment. You were in the zone and did not even realize it. And we all experience those speical times. We do. You probably don’t realize it now that they’re out there. It’s hard to see that when teh deadline is looming. In fact, you might not realize it until you look at copyedits or review a manuscript for the 50th time that you had an It moment or two. But, they are there and you need to hang on to the feeling you get when you find them.
So, as you worry and convince yourself you can’t write - and we all do that - take a step back. Go to the beginning, read through and you’ll see. Just where you thought the thread fell apart, it might actually have come together.
