I’ve noticed something with my high-school-age daughter, that she’s done for a long time. When she has a tough assignment, whether it’s homework, or a big chore (like clean up her room), she tends to goof off even more. The homework doesn’t get done, and the room never gets cleaned. She’s a super-smart kid. Homework usually comes easily to her. Keeping her room clean should be easy, but instead of picking up and putting away as she goes, she lets stuff pile up until it becomes overwhelming.
And by that point, she doesn’t want to do it. Because it’s hard!
Revisions continue to go slowly. In trying to figure out why, it’s pretty obvious: I keep running up against big plot holes that don’t have an obvious solution, and instead of just doing something about it, I go do something else, like play computer games.
Because it’s hard!
I do the same thing with a sticky revision as my daughter does with homework or a chore that’s not easy.
So that’s my reason, not excuse, for not meeting my ROW80 goals for Yet. Another. Week. I realize I probably have to just power through this stuff and I tried a couple times this week, but the powering-through doesn’t happen quickly. My muses take their good ol’ time handing me solutions to this type of problem and in the meantime, I go play another round of My Farm Life. Sigh. Or this week, I go work on a website I volunteered to do for a promo group I’m in. Either way, the revisions are not coming along as quickly as I’d like.
Sometimes I ask myself Twenty Questions, or rather, Twenty Answers, to the question, “what could happen here?” I get all the mundane, overused, and just plain stupid ones out of the way, and by the time I’ve come up with twenty things, I’ve usually come up with something good.
Other times, it’s just resistance to making a Big Change that’s going to take a lot of work. That’s where I’m at now, in Chapter 15. What’s funny is I checked my spam queue right before I started this post, and found my first, legitimate, not-spam comment in it, from a fellow Row80-er who was having this very problem! So it’s time to take her advice and just make the big change. It’s not even as big as the one she’s been dealing with.
As for my specific goals, I did get Chapter 13 and 14 revised, and there were plenty of those PITA issues in them as well.
For this week, I want to get 15-17 revised. Ideally, I’d also like to get the type-in done for the book so far, and get it out to the beta readers. I’m hosting Thanksgiving, so that’s a day I won’t get any writing done, but I’m blessed to have all my family nearby (which means no overnight houseguests or travel), and my husband also helps. I also have Wednesday and Friday off work, so that should make up for it.
Do you have any suggestions on tackling a Big, PITA Change? Or for figuring out a show-stopper plot hole? How did you do on your goals this week?
