Starting Over

My journey as a writer has taught me several major lessons over the past seven years. Some have been good. I've had a lot of fun, hit several of my professional goals, and met a lot of wonderful people. Some, however, have been painful. Growth often requires a little pain. But none have been more important than the notion of starting over.

It was natural to me, when I first started writing, to cling to words, plot ideas, and even point of views I already had down on paper. Those words had been hard to write. Each one had be cherished. Right?

Turns out, not so much. I was clinging to mistakes because they'd taken me so much time and effort to make them. Don't get me wrong, it's great to get stuff down on paper. You can't fix words that aren't there. But, much like dates, not every word is a keeper. This is a lesson I got to to relieve this week with the story I'm currently writing.

I'd started writing this story at the beginning of June and really liked the premise, but I'd been struggling with getting it down on paper. In the back of my head, I kept saying things like, "I can't wait to be in the heroine's point of view." And "God, how much longer do I have until the end of this chapter? I can't wait for this to be done." When it suddenly hit me, if I'm bored out of my mind writing the chapter and can't wait to be in the heroine's point of view because all the cool stuff is happening to her, maybe I'm writing this in the wrong point of view. And so I deleted the entire chapter and started over again.

Yes, it hurt a little to delete so many words but the change has been amazing. I'm finally unstuck. Yay! It was a good reminder that sometimes you just need to change your prospective to find what you're looking for.

Hope you are all having a great summer!