Writing Woes by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I don’t know if anyone ever told you this, but writing is hard.

I have at least started or have notes for pushing fifty titles. Some of these stories I may never finish; I’m not even sure I want to, while others I’d like to finish, but am stuck on them.

Then there are the ones where the story playing in my brain is far ahead of where I’ve written to, that I’m having a hard time rewinding my brain to the point where my writing is.

And please don’t tell me to just skip ahead. I tried that. That story still has a major hole in it thanks to skipping ahead. I can’t seem to go back and fill it in, any more than I can rewind the story in my brain to match where I’m writing.

This is just how my brain works.

That isn’t to say I can’t rewind and get to where my written story is to add to the story. I have done that, but not at the pace I want to. My brain has a mind of its own.

My brain also doesn’t always remember what I’ve written already. Case in point is the fact that this week I unearthed an old manuscript I started, I have no idea how long ago, but it is clearly a sci-fi, and older than the series I’ve been working on for like six years now. The series that I thought was my only sci-fi. It isn’t.

The only problem is, this old one is so similar to my current sci-fi that it would be counterproductive to finish this old manuscript when this current manuscript is so much further along and, well, better written. I don’t need to produce boilerplate Sci-Fi’s.

I actually have a paragraph for yet another sci-fi, and notes on another one, which I didn’t include in the list I made of my titles, since there was so little about them.

That isn’t to say romance novels don’t dominate my list, because believe me, they do. I’m just saying I have done more in the sci-fi department than I originally thought. And I do like sci-fi, but I also like romance.

And in all that, I still have my one manuscript, which I thought was romance with a touch of sci-fi, or paranormal, or something, but it turns out it's just speculative fiction.

It does have aliens in it! Why couldn’t it have been sci-fi?

Honestly, because I don’t have any futuristic or alien technology in it. I don’t have that in this story because it didn’t fit the story details.

Oh, well.

And it’s not like I was trying to write a sci-fi when I wrote that one; I was trying to write yet another romance.

Yeah, writing is hard.

And that doesn’t count how often I have to stop and use my Spellcheck. You would think a person who likes to read as much as I do and loves to write would be able to spell just about anything, but the clear answer is no, I can’t!

I might point out that way back in high school, my creative writing teacher once complained that of his two students with the most potential, one couldn’t spell correctly, and the other was horrible at punctuation.

Guess who the poor speller was.

He has suggested that the two of us team up. The only problem was that our writing styles didn’t mesh. My writing style is more on the level of feel-good/happy endings, while his was decidedly a lot darker. Yeah, I wasn’t going to work with that guy. Sorry.

Let’s face it. Konnie and I both write, and we are identical twins, but we have yet to fully collaborate on anything.

I’m not saying we don’t help each other; we do, a lot.

I’m just saying that, well, we have yet to co-write anything other than this blog.

There are bits and pieces of her work that are really all me. Believe me. Konnie couldn’t write a Male POV right if her life depended on it. So, any scene where the man’s POV is actually spot on – yeah, I helped a ton on that.

On the converse, my one female character, who was a bit shy and easily scared, yeah, I’d have never pulled that story off without her help. I had so many plot holes in that story until she stepped in; it was horrible to read.

So, yeah, we don’t collaborate, but we do help each other. She just needs more help with the Male POV than I ever need with the Female POV.

Too bad she can’t help me fill in the gaps I have.

But then we don’t write each other’s work; we just guide each other in ways to fix the problems.

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!