Walking The Path

As you can tell, it has been a while since I’ve written anything on my blog.  

There have been times when I wanted to write about events in life but I chose discretion. Let’s just say, over the last few months I have been involved in one of those events that have the capacity to either crush or remake you. After being crushed for a while, I’ve decided I’m in the remaking stage.

So putting best foot forward with a newly empowered me, I took a jump and sent the first chapter of my novel to an editor.

I hated it – the waiting – not the editor. 

There was much chewing of nails, which is kinda hard when you have acrylic ones (black and pointed at the moment).  There was much pacing of floors and being prompted to ‘be quicker’ every time I passed the television. (I will admit I did pause slightly in my pacing when approaching said television).  And there was the inevitable staring into space and wishing to curl up in a corner, cause you know it was just bad, bad, bad.

Then the editor replied.

Good news, he read the first chapter and said I can write and write well – much smiling. He read my short story or novelette as he called it, and ‘thoroughly enjoyed it’ – more smiling.  

Wait for it.

He found it hard to find the plot in my novel.

And there it was.

Thud.

I dusted myself off, looked at the story again, and  *^%$, I had to agree with him.  It was, and still is at the moment, a collection of scenes that flow, and bend towards an end, but there is no string holding it together. No backbone.

Sigh.

So after consuming a whole block of dark chocolate, (to be truthful it was probably more like two… or three…), I forged forward.

It’s been a few weeks now, and I’m still trying to work out how to fix the problem. My story is complication, perhaps too complicated, and I have a lot of characters. However, I like to read complicated stories and stories with two main characters have a tendency to bore me, (there are exceptions). Yet I see the point. I need to cut back on the complications and characters. I need to be able to walk before I can run.

I think the problem is I wrote the basis for this novel over thirty years ago. My skills of a writer have grown since then and I’m still learning. Although the story has seen numerous drafts, the backbone or lack of hasn’t changed. I need to take a step back and tear it down to rebuild it.

It’s like that in life sometimes. We need to take a fresh look at a situation and break it down into pieces before we try to put it back together again.

I could throw my hands up in the air and just give up on the whole thing.

Or I can knuckle down and just get on with the job.

And we all know the saying: Anything worthwhile is never easy.