Wednesday, October 11, 2006

The answer is…

If only I knew the question.  If only I knew any thing…

Right.  So, tonight was the second class in my second year of writing.  Last year felt like a monumental struggle.  First with teachers, then with classrooms, and finally with a story that felt like it just wouldn’t GO anywhere.  So I stopped writing that story and moved on to one of the secondary characters who seemed to be screaming my name.  And that isn’t going anywhere. 
I can’t seem to figure out how old she is, is she 27?  42?  How deep are the lines on her face?  What does she want?  Why does she wake up in the morning?
Already so many issues with the story that I don’t know where to start.

Then comes writing class.  Then come the questions.  What is your hook?  What is your pitch?  How are you going to sell a clichéd story that has already been written since man first started to write?  Where’s your character arc?  What’s the hero’s journey all about? Theme?  Villains? Conflict?  Goals?

How I can answer any of these without a story? 

Tonight was bad.  The teacher critiqued us in front of the rest of the class.  I turned in scene I agonized over.  Seriously, I spent hours thinking and crafting this scene.  I’ve thought about it, worked on it, thought about it some more, read it to people, I even turned in a version of it to a teacher last year.  But this was bad.  She said my prose was mechanical.  That my character had no depth, she was only interested in her looks.  That she didn’t understand what the story was about and how can I add conflict.  The kicker, of course, is the fact that I am writing a romance novel.  For some reason that seems to be a bad thing.

Deep down, though, I have to wonder just why it has hurt so badly.  Am I really a writer?  Am I really talented?  Maybe the only thing I am good at is this blog, and I can’t even seem to keep that up lately.  It’s a hard thing to consider.  I’ve always wanted to be a writer, always dreamt stories up in my head, and thought about it.  Right now, though, nothing seems to work.  I can’t seem to get past the first scene of the novel.  What happens next?  I want to write it, but I feel paralyzed by all the questions, the concern, the what if’s. 

How do I make it work?  How do I get it down?  How do I write 50,000 words by May?  Can I?  Is it even possible with Christmas, Thanksgiving, travel and family obligations, work going absolutely insane? 

I just don’t know what to do…