{"id":149,"date":"2011-11-04T16:56:07","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T20:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2011-11-04T16:56:07","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T20:56:07","slug":"on-abandoning-a-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"On Abandoning a Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

I meant Rhymer<\/em> to be a single episode in a larger sci-fi universe, a world which I\u2019ve toying with for years. Of the opinions I heard, one thread stuck out \u2013 I want more.<\/strong> Too vague about the world. Never explained X, Y, and certainly not Z. I liked these people, and I want to hang out with them a bit longer.<\/p>\n

Great to hear, right? Not \u201cSweet Jesus would you stop with this crap\u201d.<\/p>\n

So, I embarked on the next book.<\/strong> Same world, same protagonist, same big issues. I studied structure, mapped out a loose outline, and got to work.\u00a0 Setup scenes. Fleshing out the world. Establishing stakes, and making the reader care about the main character. Even a little foreshadowing. New twists. Things I hadn\u2019t thought of until getting the pen on that paper.<\/p>\n

And then, at about 17,000 words\u2026 let it suffice to say that there was a wall<\/strong>. I can neither confirm nor deny having hit this wall.<\/p>\n

What followed was a dark time. I wasn\u2019t writing. I knew I needed to write, to just crank out a few scenes and bust through the doldrums. So I slugged out a few scenes. And the doldrums persisted. For weeks and weeks.<\/p>\n

Not much else was getting done outside of writing either. Every time I had a free moment I thought I should be scribbling, but couldn\u2019t bring myself to give a damn about this floundering story. So I got all mopey<\/strong>. If I can\u2019t write, might as well just waste what little time I\u2019ve got. And be angry about stuff.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to be the guy who gave up on something when it became difficult. Some dilettante, unable to follow through. \u201cOnly interested in the beginnings of things\u201d. Lazy.<\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t want to go on being a grouse all the time either.<\/p>\n

So I allowed myself to table this project. Back away from it. You can\u2019t force creativity, and if I\u2019m not excited about there\u2019s no way the reader will be. I\u2019ve got some pretty good stuff to come back to when I\u2019m ready. Stubbornness is not the same thing as tenacity.<\/p>\n

I made it about thirty-six hours before getting stoked about a new project<\/strong>. That silence you hear is me not<\/em> beating a dead horse any more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I meant Rhymer to be a single episode in a larger sci-fi universe, a world which I\u2019ve toying with for years. Of the opinions I heard, one thread stuck out \u2013 I want more. Too vague about the world. Never explained X, Y, and certainly not Z. I liked these people, and I want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}