Knurd to Writer’s Block

Unless you’re a hardcore Terry Pratchett fan, you are probably wondering what knurd is. Knurd, on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, is an extreme state of sobriety, where all the pink illusions we comfort ourselves with are stripped away to leave stark, bare reality. It is described as being all the way through sobriety and out the other side. Someone who is knurd needs a couple of drinks just to be sober. Put simply, it's the complete and absolute (not Absolut! ha!) opposite of drunk. In fact, read it backwards...

So what do I mean when I talk about the knurd to writer’s block (assuming writer’s block is a state of drunkenness).

I’m referring to someone who has so many writing ideas, and is so dedicated to the idea of their craft, they become paralysed by indecision. I think this complex is tied to perfectionism. And I am guilty as charged.

Because last week I had a serious case of writer’s knurd. 

I realised this when I I was struck by recognition that I have eight short stories and one novel, none of which are finished. I mean, they are finished in the sense they have a beginning, middle and an end. But I have never completed the editing process. Which is not to say I haven’t edited them to the end. Because I have. Many times. I just… keep editing.

It kind of goes like this:

 

Step 1 – Write story.

Step 2 – Revise story.

Step 3 – Give story to alpha and beta readers.

Step 4 – Consider feedback and revise and edit as needed.

Step 5 – repeats Step 1 – 4.

And there should be a Step 6 – Finished, but there isn’t! Why not? Two reasons:

• I’m constantly trying to improve the work. Part of this stems from the fact I am nearly always studying my craft, learning new things, seeing old errors in the work and then wanting to correct them. The other part is just a complete inability to recognise when the work is finished i.e. no longer needs improving. 
•  I don’t know what to do when I get polar opposite feedback from my readers, and I mean polar opposite e.g. ‘I love this’ versus ‘this is terrible’.

So I went into emotional meltdown when I realised all this, or otherwise had a knurd moment, and suddenly reality was so tangibly real I couldn’t cope. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t see how to fix this. OK, so I’m a control freak who always knows the answer (or at least has a strategy that might lead to the answer) and this is most likely a contributing factor. 

Not knowing what else to do, I sought advice from some people I know, and what I got back helped. 

Summed up, it went like this:

• Are you a perfectionist? Because you might have to let go of that;
• Don’t listen to the critics and be true to yourself;
• Don’t let someone else edit your own voice out of your work;
• There is no way to know when a piece of work is finished; you just have to decide that it is; and
• You are a perfectionist, I know this. Creative writing is an art, like the performing arts, and often the pursuit of perfection is encouraged but is ultimately unattainable. Recognise that.

Probably no one piece of advice I got was enough on its own, but together they all helped me to get some perspective. So I came up with some rules:

• Disregard any feedback which is not supported by at least two readers. For better or worse, if it is a solitary opinion I will treat it as a subjective opinion until someone else agrees there is an issue. For my own sanity;
• I will not entertain changes that don’t feel right to me. I don’t mean of the variety of ‘My writing is perfect and nothing needs to be changed’ but more the variety of ‘If I make these changes I will be changing the very nature of the piece’. Or, put another way, it would destroy my voice. Someone else might write the same story a very different way, but it doesn’t mean my way isn’t right for me, or that either way is better. Just that I am writing with my voice and not the voice of another! 

As for finishing… I’ll just need to let go of my perfectionism. That may be easier said than done, coming from the black and white legal background I do, but I will try. 

I would like to give a shout out to the people who generously gave advice last week; @sirra_girl, @JustinBog, @DionneLister, @CharityParkerso, @RachelintheOC, @amberrisme, @wxmouse, and Erin, my friend since 1994 at school. 

And a special shoutout to @LydiaAswolf for helping me to hear my voice. Because of you, I won’t be making wholesale changes to a short story I wrote.

Thank you all and apologies to anyone I might have missed.

 

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What I Learned From Rejection... And A Fortuitous Workshop!

As many of you know, last year HarperCollins Australia requested a partial of my book Deathhawk’s Betrayal. Alas, they have now declined to see the full manuscript. Given the ratio of acceptances, that’s unsurprising, but one can always hope. In fact, we should hope, because hope takes us many places. The editor was too busy to give me detailed feedback, but what she did say was she didn’t connect emotionally with the characters. 

Ouch!

I won’t say I went immediately to panic stations, but I was concerned. None of my previous test readers had indicated this as one of the many problems I had fixed (or attempted to fix...). Was there a problem with the writing or was this simply a case of one personal preference in a subjective world? One cannot, after all, please everyone. Not even editors. That’s why published authors often get many rejections before an acceptance.

 

A number of writers I know encouraged me not to leap into anything on this basis. One opinion is not enough to justify wholesale changes. And I agree.

So I sought out some beta readers who are part of my target audience and I’ve generously had a half dozen or more offers of assistance, for which I am very grateful. I am also grateful to Twitter, which has given me access to these amazing and wonderful people, something I didn’t have on the last round of critiques I received on Deathhawk’s Betrayal.

And then, satisfied with my day’s work, I went off to read Lesson 2 of the online workshop I am currently doing, Hunting the Elusive Hook. The lesson happened to be on the first chapter of your novel and how to hook the reader, including the most important elements of that chapter.

Oh. My. God.

I had a total epiphany. I looked at my first chapter and thought ‘This sucks!’.

OK, maybe not that extreme. All the right elements were there, but they were in the wrong places. In all fairness, I did write this in 2008 and I have studied the craft of writing a lot since then so it’s reasonable to assume my skills have improved. I had edited it since, but I seem to have some difficulty editing what’s there into something better without completely ditching it and starting afresh. It’s like my creativity is chained by the words already written. The moment of potential has passed, what could be has become what is, and I can’t take it back.  

So I decided to rewrite my opening chapter from scratch.

Because an editor said she didn’t connect emotionally with my characters? No, I don’t think so, that just happened to occur on the same day I read this lesson. The rejection may have just put me in the frame of mind where I was open to the notion that there was something not quite right with my opening chapter.

And when I say rewrote, I mean rewrote. I started from scratch, using the same key concepts, and rewrote that chapter with a completely different aspect. I referred to the original only occasionally to keep a key line here or there or to make sure I covered off all the important points. Otherwise, it is completely unrecognisable.

My husband, who is not a writer, also questioned my motives in rewriting the first chapter. In a quick test, I gave him the first page of the old version and the new version and told him to tell me which was more interesting. Grudgingly, then with increasing enthusiasm, he conceded the new version was much better. The old version he described as ‘cluttered’, which translated to writer speak would mean, I think, the pace was too slow and there was too much peripheral content.

So where to from here? I’m still going to send it out to my happy beta volunteers. I’ll even give them the old chapter one to compare to the new version. Who knows, they might get a laugh out of it. As a writer, I am here to entertain... right?

After that... it will depend on the feedback I get. There may be more revisions to make.

Then let the querying begin...

“He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.”
 Anwar Sadat

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein

This Sunday I'll be sharing the new first sentences of Deathhawk's Betrayal as part of Six Sentence Sunday so be sure to stop by and let me know if you'd keep reading!

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