Hey everyone! To start with, thanks for all your support and advice. I've taken some of your suggestions (Seabiscuit is a great movie, I'm totally in love with Jeff Bridges) and it has been a great help. I'm still puffy and achy and drugged up, but I think I'm coherent enough to get back on track with the blog. I've been living on Animal Planet and McDonalds chocolate shakes, which isn't so bad once I switched to Percocet, because Lortab COMPLETELY screws me up. But anyway, thanks for sticking with me during the break. Hopefully its back to our regularly scheduled program.
So, as far as wanting to change my WIP. I've got about 17000 words down. Thats definitely the furthest I've gotten on a novel. I've started multiple others with stories and characters fairly similar to this. The genre is adult mainstream/contemporary, and honestly, I think thats been psyching me out a little bit. I've got a bunch of adult contemporary short stories and I also have some ideas that I think would be awesome as a screenplay, but I honestly am doubting whether I have the life and writing experience to write it as a full novel. I'm sure I do, I believe that anyone can write anything they want, but here's the thing--I can't help put myself in VERY intimidating company when I try adult mainstream, people like Marilynne Robinson, Wallace Stegner, Kaye Gibbons, even classic authors like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. I know thats ridiculous, but I can't help it.
So here's what I'm thinking. I would love to see my current WIP as a screenplay, so I'll try for that. And then I've got a new novel idea I'm actually totally psyched about. See, the reason I love adult mainstream is I love looking at real human emotion in real life problems, particularly with lonely middle-aged men. Don't know why, thats just the way it is. So I'm still going to have my cute middle-aged main character, but I'm going to add a little twist of fantasy. No vampires, werewolfs, dragons, anything like that, just a touch of fantasy that will 1) get me out of this psyched out mode thats making me feel like what I'm writing has to be GREAT ENGLISH LITERATURE, and 2) help me plot-wise by maybe giving me more story elements to work with. I believe the other stuff will come with experience.
What do you think? This isn't the first project I've stopped, and people keep saying 'Sarah, you need to finish something. You can't keep abandoning stuff.' And I agree, to be a writer you have to write. And I'm trying. I'm going to try and get this current idea a screenplay, which I think will be awesome, I've got a ton of short stories out there already, and each novel attempt gets better and better, gives me practice, and teaches me about myself as a writer. Right? Now, I'm not planning on giving up on this new idea. I really like it, it hits all my happy places. I think the false starts up to now have just been good practice.
What are your thoughts? Does this happen to you? Do my thoughts about why this is happening seem right to you?
Sarah Allen
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