I’m halfway through Chapter Nine of Frigid Nights and it’s a doozy. Not that it’s a magnificent piece of literature or anything, but there’s some depth to it that’s not easy to write. There’s a lot of feeling and complex emotions that aren’t easy to describe. When something changes you, it’s not just a flick of a switch. Some things develop whilst others break down. Especially when it’s something major, the changes aren’t overnight and articulating how those changes occur and take hold and affect your everyday life can be difficult.
Getting the gist of it down isn’t hard. I was on a roll as I had started the chapter and while I had a general idea of where I wanted it to go, my fingers seemed to know what I wanted to write before I did and ended up making the passage a bit more complex than I had originally thought it was going to be. I was hoping to just get 200 words down to progress the story and lead myself to what was going to happen next. I ended up with 800 words and something that’s a great addition to the story in order to progress it, but extremely complicated to write. Luckily, I have time to figure it out and this is the first draft so it isn’t and doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be put down on paper (or in Google Docs).
I put the important stuff down. The stuff that comprises the rough draft. The skeleton on which to add muscle, tendons, tissue, and flesh. The hardest part is sitting down to write it. After that, as long as you continue to punch keys, something will come to you.
Drew Schroeder 