I have thirty pages that I was going to send to my reader. Unfortunately my reader had a crisis. So I am sympathetic (thinking of you, my friend!). I am also sitting with my manuscript. I need to fix my structure. I have a few notes to myself about how I can do that. They are real actual ideas that I could put into play. However, the very sight of the manuscript makes me want to barf.
I did not write this weekend. I didn’t write much last week. (I prepared for a presentation. Past experience has shown me that I become a blithering idiot when I speak in front of people. I can read my own work, but speaking extemporaneously is a problem. However, I lectured and lead a class discussion for an hour and a half and, my friends, I was not even nervous.)
I have taken a break. I can’t really afford to stop writing and revising. I could either work on my thirty pages or move on and work on my next thirty pages. But the next few chapters (I have short chapters) fill me with similar dread. What do you do when the word “I” makes you want to vomit?
“I can’t afford to stop writing and revising.” Yes, you can. These breaks, when you’ll surely barf if you even open the file, are when the good stuff comes. You’ll still be thinking about the story (ad nauseum!) and important clues and solutions will come to you when you least expect it.
I’m not saying you need to be excited to work on the manuscript; there is certainly much dread to come. But little breaks here and there are crucial to your story’s success.
What Teri said. When you reach the point of nausea, which I have done many times with this project, a little break is called for. You’ll come roaring back and make up for lost time once you get a second wind.
Thirded. I can only manage a chapter at a time on my current editing project before I want to ditch it, but that’s better than no editing at all. Or actually ditching it.
First, kudos to the lecture. Bravo!
Next…hmmmm…let me preface this by the way my brain works. The more of a break I take, the harder it is to get back into it. I get sick of the story, totally with you. But it usually occurs more when I’m thinking of the large daunting task ahead and not a small tangible piece. When it comes to structure, it may be the fact that it is so large, so unmanageable that your brain is short-circuiting.
Maybe if you take one bit that works, that you like and reread that, it will clue you in on the writing that you don’t like as much. Or maybe you could try a different format. Make something artsy, like a big piece of paper and chart it out in diagram form, or in stick figures and see where the structure does work and where it starts to go astray.
Right now, just try and get you brain to engage on a different plane. I imagine it’s tough with ADD but if you can trick yourself into doing something fun, maybe you can not let your brain your sneaking in to look at the structure from behind a big curtain in a dark bar.
And have a beer while you’re there.