Cathy: Getting back to business
After the long holiday hiatus I took from my manuscript, I opened the document the other day and worked really hard to pick up where I left off. It wasn’t easy. I did realize during the time I was away from it, that a character name I had was a little close to a character name in a book series I admire which handles the same theme. In fact, in re-reading one of the books during my hiatus, I had the not so fleeting thought that maybe my book was a little close to that one. Maybe a little too close.
Though I had not read it in about five years, it occurred to me that this was the book that inspired me to say I could manage to write a book for this age group and this length. It was doable. After all, I’m no JK Rowling with a story arch to cover seven rather lengthy books. I could write a hundred or so pager first time out. My Great American Novel could be shelved a bit longer than it already had been. Four years ago, that one was already shelved for about seven. By the time this blog community gave me the courage to say I could return to working on this four-year-old project, I had forgotten where my inspiration came from, but apparently not the story and theme.
I can fix it, it’s not that close, and there is a bevy of bully theme books for elementary readership. However when I was reading the inspiration book and even a character name was in kind, oops! She’s a secondary character, but still. That was it. Time to figure it out. But before I do that, I really need to finish out my plot.
So back to where I left off about six weeks ago: I feel like the Tin Man. Can’t quite get those legs moving by myself. I went back a few chapters to read up to date in the plot, but I’m still writing like I’m stalling — a paragraph here, a sentence change over there, a grammar correction or three. I lost my prior groove. Any ideas on how to get it back? It may help if I can squeeze in a yoga session before I write during Baby C’s morning nap, to clear my head, but that sends likely wake up time right into when I’m likely to recover a groove. Ugh. I can hear the resistance thoughts gathering momentum.
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 