The Rush

The cinematic quality of my brain can be hit and miss sometimes. When I came up with the idea for the script I'm writing as part of my application for a fellowship, it was definitely a hit. I saw all of the details, every piece of dialogue. I had been mulling this around in my brain for months because when I first heard about the fellowship, it was only two weeks before the last deadline, so I wasn't going to rush something that clearly needed more care than that. I thought I had it all and that it would be easy to just get it down on paper. Things are never that easy.

I'm falling into a couple of writing traps that all my work, no matter what genre or format, seems to suffer from in the draft stage. The first is the rush to get the words down. I'm so anxious to get it down that some serious details get skipped over. I try to follow the rule of drafting that says you just sit and write, you don't go back and change things until you get to the end.

That leads into the second major trap--underwriting. I know many writers have the problem of overwriting--they just can't seem to stop with every little detail or aren't able to find the right place to stop the story. I get to the end and find that I only have two-thirds of what I need for a standard novel/short story/script.

I guess I'm not trying to change these issues themselves, but to be okay with them and base any and all future revision sessions on the idea that it will always be this way. It's just the way I write, and it's not a bad way. It may get frustrating at times, but it's always produced something I could be proud of in the end, so I guess it's working.

Does your writing ever give you that sense of frustration?