Making Something Better… better?

I’m a little lost.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been trying to write in the middle of the night after two long days over the weekend, but I’ve been feeling mad uninspired! 😬 And the only reason I’ve been writing these past two days is to force out words, so that I can at least keep my daily writing streak.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that this simply will not do.

I just wrote 105 words for my re-write of Something Better, and it feels like crap. The whole scene feels aimless and (despite some potentially useful elements within) I feel like it’s a scene I will definitely have to re-write again in my next round of editing. I’m writing it just to fill up the word count. 😫

That’s why I think I need to come up with a new and better way to work on this story. Maybe I need to fixate less on word count goals and go with something else. The problem is, putting in the word count at the end of a writing session does give me a huge sense of satisfaction. I still like using the NaNoWriMo website and seeing all the graphs and statistics. But maybe my daily writing goal needs to change.

I got a little burnt out last week and took an afternoon off from writing to focus on

1. working on the revamp of this website,
2. reading,
3. exercise,
4. and games to destress…

and that helped improved my mood and motivation, and even inspired me to write way more the next day when I returned to writing. That made me think. Maybe not writing every day might be the key?

NaNoWriMo got me used to writing every day, though, and it’s a habit I want to keep up. But maybe I don’t have to spend every day adding to the word count. Maybe I could work on other aspects of the story that do not require actual writing.

I’ve never been a planner (not for writing, not really in life either, ha), but I’m 60k words into this re-write and starting to feel like I am getting off track. I was watching a movie last night with my partner, and he (a former lit major as well) said something that I’ve been thinking about. He was commenting on a scene of the movie that was connected to a line previously said by a different character when he said,

This is what good writing is about — when no words are wasted and even a seemingly throwaway line leads to what comes later. There shouldn’t be scenes that don’t add to the overall plot.

And that got me thinking. I mean, I’m less strict than he is about what scenes that don’t add to the overall plot, but I guess he’s right. And I’ve also been feeling that more than a few scenes I’ve written so far could be compressed or simply cut out, and the story wouldn’t suffer for it. I did have fun writing those scenes, though, so it wasn’t completely wasted — I don’t think any scenes are wasted, even if they are eventually deleted, because you get to know more about your own characters through writing the scenes anyway.

But, still. I feel like I need to streamline the whole story. I can do it when I get around to editing and revising, but I’d also like to be more concise and focused while writing now. I don’t want to end up with a second draft that’s going to be even more confusing to edit.

Which means… I should probably do a quick outline or structure to figure out some things. Since I’m deviating quite a bit from my original first draft of the story, there are things that used to be there that don’t make sense anymore. And I’ve been throwing in a lot of new scenes that might or might not be adding to the points I want to make in this story.

The urge to go back and edit (and re-write again) is so strong, but I know if I do that, I won’t finish this draft. And I want to finish it first. So I will take some take this coming week to figure some things out, before I get back to writing.

And, who knows, maybe I won’t write every day anymore. Perhaps a couple of days a week would do? I need to give myself some downtime too — I keep forgetting that and get anxious when I don’t write. But as they say, sometimes taking a break can lead to breakthroughs. 🧐