Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Why My Writing is like My Mother's Wheelchair

At the moment, they're both a little stuck. The left wheel of my mother's electric wheelchair has stopped turning, leaving her to whirl in tiny wheelchair circles a la Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. My book feels like it's doing the same thing.

I spent about an hour on Sunday flipping levers on the wheelchair, checking wires, connecting and disconnecting little connector things and, in one fabulous clusterf*ck, running over my own leg with the wheelchair. It's still going in circles. I have a largish bruise that is not nearly purple enough for how much it hurts.

I spent several hours writing on Sunday also, but I can't seem to get a good flow going. I've been looking at my outline (such as it is), picking scenes that I know how to write and getting those down on paper. The pages are starting to mount up, but there's a lack of linear flow that's making me fretful and frustrated. It's kind of like writing in circles.

Luckily, we have a wheelchair repairman who's going to come check out my mother's wheelchair. His name is Raphael and he's Italian. I so wanted him for my sister, but apparently he's married. Unfortunately, I do not have a book repairman and even if I did, I wouldn't want to show this to him (or her). It's that much of a gloppy mess.

So . . . should I just keep getting pages down and hope it will all fall into place before the beginning of September? Or should I start trying to beat it into submission now?

6 comments:

Molly O'Keefe said...

I am so sorry about your bruise - and I am so sorry I laughed at this post - nothing is funny about this (except when written by you eileen!) i know this kind of stuck all too well, I wish I could take you out for a drink to help you get over it. But the one thing that always helps when I stuck going one direction and i don't like it - Maureen tells me to go the other direction. always works. good luck!!

Eileen said...

I wish you could, too, Molly. I keep going to other characters and writing their scenes. Maybe I just don't have a good enough handle on my heroine . . .

Don't feel bad for laughing. My sister laughed so hard when I told her about my leg that I thought she was going to choke. Frankly, it almost made it worth it.

Karen Whiddon said...

In that situation (which I'm in frequently), I just keep writing forward. Eventually at some point I feel inspired to go back and link everything together. I'm always surprised that it's not as disjointed as I originally thought!

Good luck!

Maureen McGowan said...

A book repairman! Wouldn't that be awesome. Actually, I think I have two of those, called Molly and Sinead, but I sometimes don't like to hear that the book is broken. ;)

Ouch re the bruise. When I started reading this post I wondered if it was all a ploy to get the repairman and your sister together again... Too bad he's married. :(

Eileen said...

LOL. I was willing to commit Medicare fraud to get my sister a happily-ever-after. I'm still not ruling it out.

Right now, I can't afford to hear that the book is broken. It's due September 1. I'm going to go the Karen route and just keep writing what I know and crossing my fingers that it all works out. I keep reminding myself that it always has before and there's no reason to think it won't this time.

Except I think that this will be the time I fail spectacularly.

Anonymous said...

Eileen, hilarious... and you are a good sister.

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