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Managing my writing ego

Managing my own ego is hands down the toughest part of writing. I want desperately to finish my story, and also, eventually, share it. However, in order to do that, I’ve actually got to write a story that doesn’t suck. The mechanics have to be decent, and the story itself needs to make sense and be compelling. In my mind, my story is a best seller. In reality, it’s an amateur hack, and if I’m super lucky some of my friends might read it all the way through. With that little reality check in mind, it’s only only my ego that keeps me going. Unfortunately, that ego is also a major roadblock because it gets in the way of taking advice. It’s hard to accept that what you’ve done doesn’t work, even when you know you need to listen to advice.

It’s easy to say: “Well you just don’t understand what I’m trying to do,” in response to advice that’s difficult. Particularly when it brings problems to light that would require major changes to plot or characters. Sometimes, though, the knee-jerk reaction is “Darn, now I’ve got to trash all of this work, I really like because it doesn’t work.” In truth, both of these are extremes, even when there’s truth in the reactions. It’s made more complicated when you have very supportive friends or family who encourage you to keep work they just told you was bad. At those times, who do you listen to – the bold self-assured ego, the the overly critical ‘throw it all away’ ego, or the supportive friend who insists you just need to rework a few things?

I can’t say I have  solution. Ego is a double edged sword, I both need it to proceed, and also keep me inside reality. All I know is that I have to make a focused effort to accept all advice and assume that even if it’s off base it’s pointing to a real problem and I need to understand the root of the issue and resolve it.

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Work life balance

I’ve got a full time regular job. On the whole, it’s a good job, I’m treated well by management, reasonably well compensated, get tons of paid time off, and I’ve got lots of latitude in what I do. It also has nothing to do with writing, which is good, because then writing qualifies as a hobby and I don’t mind doing it when I get home from work. However, when things get busy or difficult, it saps all of my creative energy and can sometimes turn into a 12 hour day. To top it off, I’ve got to manage homework for the kids, dinner, and other odds and ends.

Most nights, I’m too worn out to make any real progress, but over the last few months I’ve started to get serious about not losing momentum. I want to be done, and I don’t want to be that guy who spends a lot of time talking about writing and not doing it. Most nights, I spend at least an hour trying to work, but inevitably I wind up spending the time looking at a sentence or paragraph and reworking it without any real progress (Actually that’s where I seem to be with this post right now). Usually, whatever I work on winds up being replaced as soon as I get a chance to re-read it. As pointless as it seems, this strategy has so far made it easier or those times when I can actually spend a good chunk of time writing. So, I’m heading back to it, in the hopes that my upcoming long weekend will give me some time to work through the chapter revision I’m working on.

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Are my characters digging latrines?

Once I was reading a book where, after a chapter or two, the characters were forced to go on the run from some evil thing. The intensity of the chase was high, they were constantly on the move, separated from their defenders without a friendly soul to ask for help. However, during this bit of story, the writer went into what I considered a lot of unnecessary detail about what they were up to during this chase. I can’t remember exactly what the scene was, but it put me in mind of reading, in some detail, about how the characters were digging latrines along the way. It was as if the author had to account for all of their various actions and bodily functions. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t really how it went, but it felt that way. The small section of the book covered by this turned me off of the whole story. Loads of people loved this story, so maybe it’s just me, but I’ve read other stories with seemingly similar chase situations and liked them just fine. Either way, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about what it was that I didn’t like, you know to avoid it for myself. In the end I came to the conclusion what I really didn’t like was the pacing. The intensity of the action seemed completely at odds with the pace of the writing. Perhaps the author achieved what he set out to do, but I didn’t like it.

Back to my project: I’ve buttoned up a section of sub-plot, at least for the moment, and I’m back to the main character again. Before launching into that sub-plot, with a secondary character, I left the main character sitting in the middle of the woods. Now, I’m asking myself about pacing and action. I’m well over half-way into the book, and the main character is still lolly-gagging in the forest. I feel like at this point there should be some rising action or pressing problem bearing down on the him, and I even worked an additional, short chapter in to try and get there, yet it still feels flat. Things will pick back up as the chapter progresses, but I don’t want the beginning of it to seem boring or pointless. I guess the rubber-duck question of the day is: At what point does detail become latrine digging? The rubber duck’s answer for now: The main plot isn’t going to change for the details I’m working on and I’m already going to have to revise it to suck less later anyhow, so keep going and don’t get hung up on this.