Madeleine Builds Momentum (Or Tries To)

I went to a lecture last week given by a novelist whose work I've never read, but I've heard good things about her, and I was in the mood; I had worked at my office that day, and I needed some uplift. It was billed as a craft lecture, on building characters in novels, or something, but it turned out to be a talk about what inspired her as a writer, which was basically everything from her childhood. She was charming, but the lecture wasn't very informative; it certainly wasn't a craft lecture. But one thing she said which I've been thinking about since then, and especially this morning, was the importance of momentum when writing a novel.

She said she had been working on a book for years, and she was bored with it. She felt like she had nothing more to put into it. She didn't quite hate writing it--in fact, she might return to it eventually, she said--but she wasn't excited by it, either.

That's when a friend asked her to write a short piece for a collection she was editing. It was completely unrelated to the novel she had been writing, and she enjoyed it. She realized that this was the story she wanted to write now, this was what she was excited about, and she called her book editor and told him she was abandoning her long-in-development novel to write about this character and situation. The editor was appalled, but the author assured him that she could write this book and still meet her deadline, and she did.

I feel like I've lost momentum lately, just from doing other things. I've had to work four days at my office this fall instead of three, which was good financially but bad creatively. Also, thinking about the story I am writing now as "the last story for draft one" has been daunting. It's been good for me up to this point to aim for finishing the first draft of the book by Thanksgiving, having a target date (which I am going to meet), but I still have a lot of writing to do, i.e., draft two, which has to be completed before I can show the book to anyone, which is also a little daunting. (Not showing it to people--I am dying to show it to people--but having to write another draft. Actually I am excited to write another draft. What's daunting is that I want to get it right.) I had such great momentum all spring and summer and now I've lost it a bit, but I'm not going to abandon the book (oh my god can you imagine?); I'm still excited about it. I chose an epigraph the other day--actually I chose five--and that started to get me back into it.

I'm also using the Mildred as a way to build momentum. I'll try to write on it most mornings, certainly on mornings like this one, when I have to go to the office. (And now I'm going to be late.)

Incidentally, Agnes is STILL not smoking. Oh how I wish she'd write on here again...