Pat Bean's blog

It's hard to improve on Mother Nature, but Epcot sure gives it a shot. -- Photo by Pat Bean

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Epcot's garden depiction of Peter Pan. I could do with a little of J.M. Barrie's imagination right now. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air.  All I must do is find it, and copy it.” – Jules Renard, “Diary,” February 1895

NaNoWriMo Update – 15,845 words.

Another slow going day. I’m on target to meet the 50,000 word goal, but because of commitments later in the month I had hoped to be about 1,700 words farther along than I am.

I got one difficult scene worked out today, which I had been thinking about for two days. And I went back and filled in a few holes. But I had to keep slapping my hands to keep from doing anything but minor editing to make everything agree.

It’s interesting in writing such a long figment of my imagination that I can come up with what I think is a brilliant idea, but then it contradicts something I wrote earlier. It was much easier when I wrote a long journalistic series. I had everything outlined before I started, That’s because facts are facts, and not something to be played around with, I didn’t have to remember whether my main character had blue or green eyes, and whether another character was in her 70s or her 80s.

I have to tell you that I have written one novel, also a mystery, which took me two years. I finished it, but it had holes and I never went back and fixed them. A hard copy of it still sits in a file folder. The biggest problem with that first book was that my ending lacked drama. So already I’m worrying how to put the drama in the ending of the one I’m writing now.

Or perhaps my biggest problem is that I’ve started questioning myself.

Is my book good enough? Is this what I really want to be doing? Can I continue? Is what I’ve already written just horse pucky? I think it’s these things that have slowed me down the past two days.

I feel like Edvard Munch’s woman in “The Scream.”