Walking on, walking on broken glass

So. Remember how I made a goal to have a finished draft of the new WIP completed by July 1? Ummm … yeah. About that.

I’m right around the halfway mark on it, and things have felt a bit off for a couple weeks now. I blamed fatigue caused by a hectic schedule, I chalked it up to the midway blues that always seem to befall me, I wondered if I needed to do more research. Basically I did everything in my power to ignore the truth that was bubbling there right below the surface. This WIP was broken. It wasn’t until I stood before my critique group to read aloud the chapter where I knew I’d gotten off course that I admitted there was a problem.

I might be making things sound more dire than they are. All I really need to do is make my character’s motivation stronger (although this does involve coming up with a new primary motivation and making the one I have now a secondary motivation). I can probably keep 75% of what I’ve already written, and I did know right off the bat the direction I needed to go in. The question then became: Do I go back and fix it now, or do I power through and do it later? I’m choosing the former. But either way, July 1 is off the table. This thing will be done when it’s done.

Have any of you experienced something similar? Did you immediately fix the problems or wait until you had a finished draft?

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