by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
This is about the point where I usually quit when it comes to writing a novel, but I’ve taken the idea of “know when to rest, not quit” to heart and so I’m hoping to use the time I’ve taken off writing to recharge my batteries. I think that’s the key issue to writing a novel — you have to appreciate that it’s marathon, not a sprint. There will be times when you maybe don’t go as fast as you have been going.
Part of the reason I’ve slowed down the last few days is not only is summer over and I realize I have some serious life-issues to address, but I’ve come to a point in the novel where it really has hit me that there will be people who poo-poo the entire conceit of the novel because of where it’s set. If was set somewhere sexy like LA or NYC, then a lot of the media elite would get off on seeing the infrastructural of places they actually knew being used for something dramatically different. And, yet, once you get into the universe I’ve built, it doesn’t make any sense that places like that would be used. There’s a very specific point to where I’ve set the vast majority of the novel, not just in its own way its my own personal historic geography that I know really well.
Meanwhile, I keep thinking up all these other great novel concepts that would distract me but for the reason that I can’t think of a plot for them. So, my attention comes back to what I’ve been working on the last few months. The story has changed so dramatically from what I thought it was going to be originally that it’s quite something. But the point is to just keep going. I have a really strong concept and a plot for once, so I need to buckle down and keep going.
Only time will tell, I guess.
