Angel reruns, a banana popsicle and making tator tot casserole for dinner made my brain rumble. Actually, no, what made my brain a rumble would be me reading Gabriel’s Inferno again – for like the, 1,000th time. (So many times a friend asked if my book was still together: which it is, by the way.)
What makes a writer a writer?
I have been asking this question to myself a lot lately. Not because I doubt what and who I feel – but because – am I allowed to call myself a writer? Are you only considered a writer if you have published a book? If so, are actors who write autobiography’s writers? Are chefs who have twenty cook BOOKS, writers? But can you consider a person who is always thinking about writing, but doesn’t write daily; who stares at blank word documents and sighs because they words won’t flow out of her fingertips? Someone who can read book after book and get so many ideas for a novel, but cannot seem to get passed the first sentence to make anything happen? How about the girl who has actually written a novel, but can’t seem to finish editing out the crap parts without dousing it in gasoline and lighting it on fire?
Am I considered a writer or am I a wanna-be writer who dreams of it, but won’t let herself have it because she can’t center her brain enough to do it? But in the same sense, how can I consider myself a writer but not the girl next to me who writes poetry in her basement wearing all black with candles lit and Nightwish playing in the background? What makes me a writer and not her? Are we both considered writers?
I feel like a fraud at times. I’m probably just overthinking things – like usual – but how can I be something if I won’t allow myself to be it? I feel like a fraud because I only think about doing something. I did it, once, but now I’m stuck and afraid. I’m afraid because what if my story that I wrote is as bad as I feel? I mean, it cannot be too good if I can’t bring myself to read it to edit it – can I? &&& I don’t want to ask someone else to edit it, right now, because I know how bad it is.
I bought a indie writers book – she self-published &&& one of the authors I enjoy reading was promoting it. So I bought it, why not? It was only 1$. As I was sitting at work reading it on my Kindle all I saw were errors. Spelling errors. Sentence errors. Run ons, and paragraphs that made no sense. I even read through a part that sounded like the character in the book was a pedophile. I eventually stopped reading it because it went on && on &&& on &&&& on about absolutely nothing. At one point I couldn’t figure out what was happening. That’s what I fear. &&& I know for a fact that a part of my story is exactly that. It’s rambles. It’s nothing. It’s pure crap.
When I started writing Frost, I read how long people think romance novels should be and I went with that. So instead of going for content I wrote for numbers. Page numbers. Word numbers. I was trying to reach 100,000 words without realizing just how much garble I had. So now, when I edit it, I’m trying to take out the garble and leave the story. The content. The thing that will bring readers back. But when I sit to edit the garble I get sad because of how much there really is.
I swear I have a chapter where one of the characters is making dinner. I wrote paragraph after paragraph him making dinner and their thoughts and their crap. It LITERALLY has no place in the story. No one cares that the character likes spaghetti or that they know how to make it. I could have simply wrote “before she arrived he busied himself in the kitchen, making the only dish he really knows: spaghetti.” But no, I wrote how he put the water in the pot and salted the water, and how he boiled the noodles to perfection and made the sauce and poured the wine and she watched. The other character just watched him do it without them ever saying a single word to each other. Instead I could have wrote “he pulled out her chair and poured a glass of wine, living in a small town he doesn’t know much about fine wines, but the lady at the store recommended this one. She took a drink and smiled, showing her affection for the wine choice. She has never been a fan, but knowing that he picked and offered it, today – she loves wine.” I went on to say how he made the plates, put down the spoon and fork, sat in front of her, and then went on to talk about how they ate it. HOW THEY ATE IT! When I could have said “he was no chef, but when it came to spaghetti, he felt it. He gently sat a plate down in front of her. ‘Do you want some cheese?’ Her nerves collided with her brain, but nodded and smiled. He smiled, thinking it was cute every time she blushed, and grated some parmesan on top. Not a lot, but enough to top it right off. She looked around the table at the spread and felt like a queen. It had been a long time since she was offered so much and was allowed to sit at the table and enjoy it with someone. He is going to spoil her, was the only thing she was thinking.”
But here I am. My story isn’t written like that. Maybe I should stop complaining. Complaining doesn’t get me anywhere or do anyone any good. It doesn’t get the story edited or completed. It doesn’t help me in publishing it or allowing someone to read it. What I NEED to do is just get back to it – open the story back up and finish it.
But how do I get passed my irritation I have with the story to actually finish it? I still love the idea, the concept, but a part of me doesn’t like the characters. That’s the problem – I think – I don’t like the characters I built &&& that’s something a writer must do. When I read interviews or listen to authors talk – the one thing they all say, “I love the characters and I loved watched them grow and build into something great!” I have changed and rearranged and renamed and rebuilt my characters so many times – that I am just fed up with them and all they are about. I keep thinking about things I have to have in my story and I keep screwing it all up. I don’t NEED a gay character. I don’t NEED a suicide attempt. I don’t NEED guys being animals. I don’t NEED girls being damsels. I don’t need half of what is in it, but I Have it, because a part of me thought it had to have everything in one. If I put everything into one story then I will have nothing left for my other twenty novels I want people to read.
&&&& who said I had to have 300 pages? If I don’t make it to 300 pages, that’s fine – that just means it’s a shorter book. But of course, I wanted words and length so I wrote and wrote until I had such and such amount of crap and garble that now I have to… you know.
&&& now I’m sorry for the rambling but I think I’m just mad at myself. In 2012, when I began this story, I really believed all of this. Now, the 2019 me is trying to fix the crap that 2012 me wrote. It’s aggravating…
♥The Barbosphere♥ 