I am a god of my own microcosm and I am afraid.
I have created a world. A lopsided, broken world the orbits drunkenly around its creator...Me...
Yes, I have written a first draft.
It's perfect in it's dysfunction.
And I am terrified.
I am terrified because now I have to take this broken ball of words and tear it apart, character by character, word by word, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, and rebuild it. Make it whole again. Make it less broken, more stable in its orbit. Make the words more meaningful, the tension more palpable, the characters more real. Take all the broken pieces and make them whole. Take this barren world and make it alive.
I am its god. The creator of its existence. It's terrifying.
I woke up at 4:45 this morning because today I'm planning on starting the revisions. Marking up the beautifully printing, pristine manuscript with hasty scrawls of fear driven madness. I woke up with words crashing in my head. Loud, screaming words. I let the draft sit for several days. My MC, Julius, says it's time.
I will do it because I am its creator. I am it's god, but I am also its slave. Somewhere along the line it BECAME. It isn't a figment of my imagination anymore. I breathed life into it and it lives, breathes, loves, hates, FEELS.
Now I must tame it, make it whole. Give it a soul.
It terrifies me when I think of it.
Despite the terror deep in my heart, I know I can do this. I took it from nothing and created it.
Today, I start crafting its soul so that one day it might touch others and live inside them. A memory, a history, changing them the way it has changed me. This isn't self-aggrandizing. It is the nature of stories.
One day this story will be whole and it starts today.
I am a god of my own microcosm and I am terrified/certain/confidence/fearful/excited.
My will be done.
'Till Next Time
*laughs* Love this.
ReplyDeleteIt's strange, the balancing act between control and utter fear. It's a tightrope in a darkened circus, a spotlight on you the whole way, never seeing more than the next step. But you'll get there!!
Oh yes, I've done almost 4 chapters so far today. :D It actually moves pretty well and I even caught myself smiling at it. Not so scary now that I'm in it, but starting...oh boy...
DeleteRevisions are where the REAL work comes in.
ReplyDeleteBut you've GOT this! *cheers you on*
:D Thank you. :D
DeleteRevisions are the worse! I messed up my latest WIP and had to tear out quite a bit and rewrtie. Dragged my feet on that for weeks, but once it was done the story flowed so much better to the end.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck on the revisions!
Thank you so much! So far they've been ok. I'm up to page 50. Slowly and surely. Haven't transferred the changes to the computer yet.
DeleteOh gee, thanks for scaring the bejeezus outa me. Now I'm never gonna finish my draft!
ReplyDeleteLOL. :D You'll finish and it will be awesome and then you'll do the revisions (which are in some ways easier than the first draft) and it will be awesomerer... ;-)
DeleteREVISIONS ARE THE FUN PART!! :-D
ReplyDeleteSeriously, as much as I enjoy the discovery phase with first drafts, there's something about going in there and taking it apart and making it RIGHT that I absolutely adore. (Call me crazy.) (Then again I've been in revision land so long I swear I don't know how to finish a first draft anymore.)
All that to say...*HUGS* You're gonna do fine. Once you get started, you'll be surprised at how fast it can go! You will kick that book's butt and the #writemotivation crew will be cheering you on the whole way. :-)
Thanks, Michelle. :D Yeah, I'm about 70+ pages in. It was just the initial, OMG moment when I looked at the book and realized. Crap, I've got to read this again. Finding lots of mistakes. Eep! Hoping to have a new draft done soon. Have two new chapters planned and some word tweaking and stuff.
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