Go the Distance

Isn’t it funny how sometimes something you write just seems complete and utterly…awful? You slaved away hours upon countless hours, spent months plotting, casting, world-building and writing only to discover when you’re nearly done that it’s completely full of barnacles?

I guess this happens to everyone, but honestly, you aren’t going to realize what kind of an effect it has until it happens to you.

Remember the story I mentioned at the beginning of the year? I really did try to finish. But then it got to me; this story seemed absolutely worthless to me. It was stupid, overdone and not worth writing, not to mention finishing. I felt that way for well over a month, and I couldn’t shake it.

Eventually, I heard a song that always made me think of one of those characters, and I realized something. Several things, in fact. First, this story was not stupid; it just needed work.

Second, I realized that there was a certain take I wanted to have on the things that happened to certain characters and I would need to put that into my next rewrite if I wanted this to be satisfactory to myself.

Third, I needed to wait. Though I had had these epiphanies and thought I knew what I needed to do, I could still tell I need more distance before I’ll be able to write this story well. I’ve been working on it so long that certain things seem good that are bad and certain things seem bad that are good.

Whenever you are writing, whether short stories or long ones, the first thing any author, editor or writer will tell you to do when you revise is to put that story away. Hide it. Forget about it. DO NOT LOOK AT IT.

See, as writers, sometimes we just need to forget what we wrote. We need distance to see things in the bigger perspective. Just like you can’t see an entire landscape if you’re huddled against one rock, you can’t see what the story really needs if you’re upset about just one sentence, scene or even just one character. We need time apart to get far enough away to see everything.

For me, spending time away from something that frustrates me is easy, but I still look forward to the day when I can take this story from the drawer, shake it off and take my trusty red pen to it. It may be a while off, but it will come, and I can’t wait.