I’ve been making good progress with Penumbra/Eisengrau this week. It’s funny, no matter how much time I put in, I still have moments where I realize I know so little about writing. This isn’t a craft that you perfect, such as playing an instrument. For everything step you take, you open up another two down the road.

For example, I’ve spent probably four days wrestling with a chapter. It’s mainly a dialogue between two characters, and regardless of how I approached it I kept getting blocked. Every time I figured out something I was doing wrong, I would progress a couple of paragraphs down then get locked up again. Seriously, four days I spent struggling with this before I realized what the problem was…

I was in editing mode and trying to free write a new conversation.

Now, I state that like the issue should be self-evident, but it isn’t, so let me clarify. I’ve got two primary modes that I write in: the first is free writing mode where I get started on a scene and just let go. I don’t worry about how the prose sound, I don’t worry if the sentence is filled with grammar errors, passive language, or dialogue tags. I just write, which if you haven’t done that before is an exhilarating feeling but most importantly it gets my ideas down on the page. Is the writing terrible? Oh yes, but that’s ok! That’s where my next writing mode comes in.

Editing mode is where I take what I’ve written and I trim it, fluff it and make it look pretty. I fix things like grammar and passive voice, pull out the stuff I don’t like or need and make everything work together nicely. The stuff that I don’t want to be spending precious time on when I’m just trying to get my ideas down on the page. In this mode, I want to be taking stuff I’ve written and perfect it, I don’t want to be trying to write new stuff, because it’s an excruciating process to try to write a perfect sentence from scratch.

Here’s the thing, I think a lot of writers run into this problem (I know I did) when they first get started. They sit down, write that first sentence then deliberate over it. Does it sound good? Is it what they really want to say? Are their characters engaged or interesting? But that’s wrong way to do it, at least for me!

And that was the problem I had. I was working in a section that needs free write mode and I was trying to write it in editing mode. So I’ve dropped it for a short time and I’ll return to it later in full, free writing goodness. In any case, I don’t think my plan of having the manuscript done in two weeks will pan out. But I’m close so I’m just going to go full steam ahead!

Rob and I did a practice podcast two weeks ago, like I mentioned in my last podcast. It didn’t come out too poorly if I do say so myself, so hopefully we can get together and do some more. Just need to figure out where to post it now!