Day 26 - An Ending

I'm not done for the night, but wanted to post.

This whole business with letting oneself write poorly has completely sunk in, and I'm loving it. You can do all kinds of things, knowing that they're probably messed up, just to work out an idea.

Last Friday, and earlier this afternoon/evening I started out with scraps, and wrote my way into something that became interesting. Both needed to connect, somehow, and while writing today I thought to myself, I'll wait until I finish the whole thing, then come back to it when all is better. Then, while writing the second bit today--and it's important to remember that I'm writing only because I've allowed myself to write poorly--the two ideas came together on their own. There's all kinds of nonsense and gobbledy-gook getting there, but I got there.

Here's an example of allowing myself to write poorly. Make sure you're seated. This gets ugly.

Surely, though, there was something he could do. Although he had lost most of his power as an Arjane, he still had some residual strength. Nobody had come to relieve him of his duties; the other Warders hadn’t even come to the Pools. Was everyone dead? He needed his compeers, the strength that they had. If only one would have come, would come, he would be freed to seek help for his beloved. Or, together, with his attunement to the Pool of Stasis and their sheer strength, perhaps they could arrange a way for her to attune herself with her Pool. It was sheer hope that he had, that the powers inherent in that pool were similar to the ones in his—that they would have life-giving properties, as his involved (or) controlled stasis. But it had to be, it must be true.

There are four different ideas in that paragraph, all of which point in different directions. By continuing, after this paragraph, to allow myself to write poorly, I was able to bring the ideas together. Of course, I'm using footnotes heavily while I write, to make sure that when things do come together, I explain it to myself in such a way that I won't forget. There's so much that I have forgotten from world-building work I did in the past two decades...can't lose it again. Sometimes I've come upon a note that's interesting, but I can't figure out what it was supposed to go with. So it's lost on me.

When I started writing this afternoon, I quickly wanted to stop. I wasn't "feeling it", and nothing was coming naturally. The advice we've been getting from published authors rang loud in my head then: just write; don't worry; put words on the page; who cares if they stink; and, oh yeah, JUST WRITE.