I’ll be taking time away from the blog to make a dent in the new project.
I’ve started drafting and don’t want to take away from that.
I will post little short posts like this one. Just to give you a heads up on what’s going on.
Happy writing.
This week I’ve given into my fears.
I wrote without worry. Making sure to give myself the space I needed. The time I needed and allowed myself to screw up.
All of these have given me more peace in my writing than I’ve felt in a long time.
I finally feel like I don’t have to worry about the way the story is going, even if I feel it’s going off the rails.
I’ll make a note of it and keep writing.
There used to be this feeling of loathing when that what happen.
I’d think, “oh shit, I’ll have to fix that”, and stress over it. This week I haven’t done that.
Every word of the draft has been good and I feel it’s moving in the right direction.
Today I’ll get some set up things done. Make some l headway on certain items, and get the story rolling.
I hope you all have a great weekend.
I’ll be bartending today and tomorrow, but Sunday, we’re going to the state fair.
My wife and daughter have paintings entered in the fair.
I feel that the world in which I write and what I write are corollaries.
They’re connected to each other. They have a connection to who I’ve been.
The reasons I write horror are connected to what is going on around me. The way I deal with the world and how the world deals with me, it’s all connected.
Horror is that genre that defines me. It’s darkness has kept me safe from myself and my depression since I was a teenager.
I watched horror as a kid because it fascinated me. I read it because it scared me and I write it for both of those reasons.
You’d think in a world gone crazy, I’d write something calming. It’s in the darkest places I’ve always found the brightest lights.
The darkness of horror felt safer than the world around me, it still does.
There’s something about being lost in the dark and having something horrifying take you down a spiral of fear.
That spiral doesn’t take you down all the time sometimes it leads you on a merry-go-round.
It turns until you get off but it always turns.
Keep going until the horror stops and you find yourself.
When I started writing I felt lost.
I didn’t know how to do this thing.
For years I wrote like my favorite authors. I thought if they can do it by the seat of their pants, why can’t I?
What I really learned is that you have to be honest with yourself about the craft.
Are you getting rejections because of how you write?
I hadn’t thought about this until after I wrote nine books.
I believed that my writing as it was should be good enough to get published. That wasn’t the case.
The truth is, the story meandered through each chapter never finding a true foothold(even after subsequent drafts).
It was only after I thought of quitting that I started to really think about outlining.
When you’re at the bottom and you feel lost, you have to try something different.
I was fearful of outlining because I’d tried it before. It was when I was new to having the time to write and I wanted to get it on the page as fast as possible.
I only wanted to see words on the page.
It hurt to have to take a step back and reevaluate what I wrote, how I wrote, and why I wrote.
All of this was difficult and hard on my ego but I want to be published more than anything.
When you want something bad enough and what you’re doing isn’t working you have to fix it.
I fixed it!
The hardest things are always the most difficult, but also the most rewarding in the end.
As I wrote on Monday, I’ve learned to understand the process.
Like every kind of relationship, when you get to the right one, you understand why the others never worked.
That’s how I’ve felt over the last week and half.
I built the foundation of the relationship, found common ground, and constructed a blueprint for how to move forward.
I wouldn’t say my process was broken before it just wasn’t the process I needed for my writing.
Now I’m on the real work of the outline.
I’ve created scenes, learned about characters, and quite a bit about myself.
Throughout, I’ve begun to understand the flaws in my other books and why they just weren’t there. It wasn’t that they weren’t good stories, it’s that I didn’t understand how to create the blueprint for them.
Today I’ll spend my time with the outline. Creating things and finding out what is the best use of each set piece, each section of foreshadowing and how to do it properly.
I’m moving forward and that a good thing. I’m still planning on starting the drafting process in October. It will be a Halloween gift to myself.
Happy writing and always keep writing.
Brian B Baker, Writer 