Learning to drive a standard
Do you drive stick shift? Do you remember learning how? For me (many years ago), it was pretty traumatic. We lived at the bottom of a hill, and the vehicle was a 3/4 ton Jeep pickup truck. The kind with the gear shift that took up two square feet of shifting space. I remember trying to get up that hill, the truck roaring and lurching and almost stalling; the neighbors plugging their ears and looking askance out their windows.
That’s about how I feel about writing the last few weeks. It has been an unending saga of lurching starts and stalling stops when least expected. Except that by now, they should be expected! The past couple of days I’ve done well to get about a thousand words a day. I feel like I’m wading through molasses, and then all of a sudden there is an *AHA* moment, and something quite unexpected gels totally. Everything is glorious and golden for a few hundred words while that perfect moment is captured, and then…it’s back to the slog. Quite a lot of slog, actually. Not that it’s *sludge* you understand. I think there’s some decent writing in there, and the story certainly has my heart, but that hasn’t made it easy to write.
I’m sure it hasn’t helped that I’m fighting a cold this week. I think I’m winning. I’m sure trying, anyway!
Thankfully, learning to drive a stick wasn’t that hard for me. Even so, it’s a great analogy for the fits and starts I find in writing.
Okay…I was a slow learner 🙂 May I blame it on the truck? It wasn’t exactly a dream come true!
You may. 🙂
when I’ve gotten stuck like that it comes down to the way I wrote a scene or a plot idea. something’s not right and my muse knows it, but won’t share. Hugs. I hope it works out.