A hiatus...

3 years in the making...

The first draft of my current WIP took all of six months to write. It was rubbish, but in all fairness I was a stay at home mum running two businesses, studying at uni externally and trying to juggle a family that appeared to be coming apart at the seams.

The second draft took 12 months. Again it was rubbish, but much less the filthy stinking rotting sludge of the first and more a discarded food wrapper kind of rubbish. The reasons the second draft took twice as long as the first were numerous. Due to the epic failure of one business and the ginormous stress of the other not being worth the money it could earn, my husband and I decided to sell up and head north. We did that, with two toddlers in tow, and only our dreams of a fresh start to sustain us.

The third draft took a further 12 months to complete while we settled into our new home. It was slightly better but not much. By this time I had found a trusted critique partner and with her helpful comments I quickly made the changes.

The fourth draft was the quickest of all, I completed it in one month. The circumstances surrounding this epic achievement were ideal: I had a deadline, my foray into full time study (who doesn't work better under pressure? ) I had my mother visiting for a month (so a full time quality babysitter that didn't mind if I stayed buried in my work way past the agreed knock off time) and I had one of those rare bursts of creative energy that carried me through (most of the time these bursts of energy tend to peter out after the chocolate runs out but not this time!).

At the end of this month I was happy with the final product and I was ready to set it aside for 12 months to mull it over while I completed my degree. The plan was to launch head first into the final draft/line edit upon graduation. It was a great plan.

Very rarely do things go according to plan.
I graduated over two months ago. Despite the copious amounts of notes scribbled in notepads, saved in numerous word documents on laptop and hard drive, scribed as blog posts and mumbled into the Dictaphone app on my iPhone, the fifth and final draft is nowhere to be seen. In fact it has escaped so far over the horizon that I don't know if I have the energy to chase it down.

The biggest problem, the reason for my procrastination, my excuses for stalling? This blog. Writing competitions. Short story submissions. Secondary projects. Facebook. New manuscript ideas. Other Writers and their awesome blogs that eat into my creative time. All of these things I have pursued instead of starting the re-write.

Also...
There are a few bare faced truths that I have had to face.
1. I hate the manuscript.
2. I think it is complete rubbish.
3. I want to put it on the scrap heap and start again.

Of all of these truths, I have come to terms with the first two.
1. I still love the premise, characters and setting.
2. I am a much better writer than I was when I started 3 years ago.

The third truth is the one I am having trouble with.
I just don't know how can I start again, completely from scratch. Every time I sit down to write, my brain freezes in fear. I panic.  My heart all but stops. I have hit a very famous brick wall.

Writers Block
The trouble is, it is not the words that don't come, my characters are alive and well in my head.  Honestly, they talk to me all the time, asking me when I'm going to get my act together and write their story, telling me tidbits about their day, forcing my hand to scribe conversations they've had with their mother, brother, lover. I have the Who, What and When down pat.

The thing that won't come is the HOW.  And the thing I don't know is WHY are they talking to me and WHERE is the story going?

This is a problem. I have brain stormed, I have drawn charts, I have broken the original manuscript down scene by scene, I have dissected the characters until I am blue in the face. And still I cannot for the life of me work out the best way to tell the story.

What all of this ranting means.
I have not written so much as two words toward the new manuscript. And I have a time limit. You see a set myself a new deadline, to have the final draft ready by my 33rd birthday which falls in three short weeks on the 30th of May. Also, I hoped to be ready for query by my husbands 40th birthday, the 1st of July, only eight very short weeks away. If I don't do something soon, I will miss my deadline. Sure this will not cause too much damage to the greater time continuum but it will damage me. I hate to miss deadlines, I hate to ask for extensions. Besides, I know the chick giving out the extensions, she's not very nice to slackers, regardless of their circumstance.

So this glorious Sunday morning- which is mothers day by the way and yes I was spoiled very much by the gorgeous Cat and Thing 1 and Thing 2 outdid themselves with hand made cards and gifts- I have decided that I will no longer let anything interfere with the production of the manuscript. 

I am putting all other projects on hold, I am cutting myself some slack and I am going to bury my head in PLOT resurrection. I will not be blogging, facebooking, twittering, short story writing, beta reading or doing anything else remotely unrelated to the emergence of Silken Threads.

Please bear with me, I will be back, I just cannot say when...