I've been writing a lot lately. It's actually been consuming a lot of my time, both in front of my computer and what I end up thinking about when I'm not there either. I'll have an idea on my drive and grab my phone and start the recorder up. What I really need is to get this thing finished, or at least send off a few more copies to readers for feedback.
I've listened to, or read, rather, a lot of authors who claim they do it for themselves, or they don't care about criticism, but that's not something I can detach from. I've gotten better at not taking things on a personal level, or fighting for every word choice like it's golden, but it is still hard when you turn out hours of what you believe to be good thoughts and stories and get feedback you were not expecting.
On the converse, though, when you feel there are weaknesses in a passage or an area of your story, and a reader then comments that they related to that directly, and they know what the character is doing or feeling, you wonder if you are being too hard on yourself.
My desire is to put out a story. The one I am currently working on is special to me, because I have had this story inside me and rattling around, growing, changing and evolving for over ten years. It's a lot to put out there at once, since it came out unformed and raw. Sometimes even the best plans for it change. I recently had to scrap an entire chapter I had planned to include simply because there was no real way for me to add it once I had built up a significant portion of the back story.
This has led me to the conclusion that writing is only partly how you build an idea, but a lot to do with how you can execute the idea, how you can continue to keep it fresh for over three hundred pages, and how you can build realistic characters who hold true to that image for the entire length of the book. You discover things about the story and the characters as you have to make them stay part of this mold that they have been built from, and it can even surprise you, the author. Realize, though. If the last five hundred words you have written is crap. It is crap. Throw it away, because if you write for yourself, you deserve better, and if you write for your readers, they definitely deserve better.
