Don't Panic!

Last week I freaked out. I mean, I had a serious writer’s meltdown. It included tears and despair and hopelessness. Actually a lot of tears. (I cry at commercials.) I was reading through the rough draft of the climatic scene of my 3rd book.

A friend who is always honest with me, delicately pointed out that it was…. (cringe) FLAT.

He was being kind. It was pure crap. Horrible. Messy. It had as much tension as a broken piece of yarn. And short. Depressingly short. And I had no idea how to fix it. Or even if it could be fixed.

Thus, the meltdown of epic proportions. I wasn’t a writer. I was a fraud. Flop. Amateur. I sucked. Everything I did, sucked. And sucked in the worst possible way.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gone through this. Nor am I the first writer to go through this. I’m pretty sure there are some very popular and prolific writers out ther that go through this morass of depressing self doubt.

Now, this is not to be confused with Writer’s Block. That’s another little monster that will get its own post someday. 

But, guess what? It’ll pass. There are important things you need to remember as you dry your tears: ALL first drafts suck. If anyone tells you differently, they are lying or delusional. The first draft is nothing more than a skeleton. The foundation of your story. The crucial starting point, not the end product.

This is what I did. After sobbing for a number of hours and exhausting myself. I forced myself to read it again. Yeah, it was still pretty disappointing, but I realized something important. I was still okay with the WHAT happens. It was the HOW that sucked. The framework was there. I just needed to give it some life. 

I was looking at two thousand words in desperate need of help. I broke the action down by what takes place and in what order. I realized I left a lot of things out. There was no description of where the action was taking place. No internal dialog from the characters. No details of the action itself. Just a list of things that happen.

Once I realized I had to build on what was already there (and pay homage to the grammar monkey), I was able to calm down. So those two thousand words became five thousand. The tension leading to the action was hyped up. The tension I felt I was able to inject into expanding on what I had already written. 

I was able to fix it. I’m also feeling a whole lot better with the result. So don’t panic. You’ll know if you

need to fix it or replace it. Let the emotion you feel out and then dive back in and take care of your darling. After all. YOU are the Writer. This is your story, your world. You RULE!