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Tanara McCauley

~ Love Knows Color

Tanara McCauley

Tag Archives: first draft

Falling Off the Writing Wagon

07 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by tanaramccauley in Writing and Pursuing Publication

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

amwriting, author, falling off the wagon, first draft, inspiration, labor, labor of love, motivation, perseverance, push through, wagon, work, writer, writing, writing schedule

wagon wheel

“Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” ~ Confucious

Quite an inspiring declaration. Too bad “inspiring” is not synonymous with “truth.”

I love to write. The process of weeding out an idea, then turning that idea into hundreds of pages, is beyond rewarding.

But make no mistake about it. It’s work. And writing is never harder than when there’s a break in the process.

Circumstances in the past couple of weeks have pulled me away from a consistent writing schedule. And while much of it was beyond my control, I still fretted daily in the back of my mind: “You need to write. You need to write.”

Now that I’m free to get back to my current work in progress, the chasm between what needs to be done and what I think I can do seems to have widened a mile per day spent not writing. I agonize over closing the gap.

Getting back into a rhythm will be a grueling process; a mental strain akin to standing up, dusting off, and limping to catch a wagon that I fell from, before it picks up speed and barrels down the trail without me. The prospect of giving up becomes as tempting as a cold drink in a dry desert.

All the more reason to push through.

Writing is a part of me. I do it because I love it, but it’ll always be work. Whoever coined the phrase “labor of love,” knew what they were talking about.

Now I’ve got a wagon to catch.

Your turn: Do you love what you do? Has it ever been hard for you, despite how much you enjoy it?

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Deleted Scenes

20 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by tanaramccauley in Writing and Pursuing Publication

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

achievement, amediting, amwriting, animation, deleted scenes, draft, editing, final draft, first draft, movies, netflix, perseverance, perspective, quit quitting, writer, writing

200401076-001Ever watch the deleted scenes of a movie? Better yet, ever watch the deleted scenes of an animated movie? If you’d asked me that question ten years and three kids ago, my response might’ve been an incredulous, “What on earth for?”

Nowadays, however, it’s an all-wise sounding, “But of course.”

In the world of writing (an ever incredible, tortuous, rewarding, baffling, coffee-chugging existence) deleted scenes are a constant.

Watching them in movie form provides a much needed perspective change.

While standard movies are typically cut because of length issues, animators delete for reasons we writers can easily relate to:

  1. The plot has taken a different direction and the scene doesn’t fit.
  2. The character behaves in that particular scene contrary to the character as represented throughout the film.
  3. The scene is just…garbage.

But the creators of the script didn’t let a weird spot halt their progress. They pushed ahead, scene by scene, drawing by drawing, until the work was completed.

Then they cut out the bad, cheesy, gag-me portions, leaving excellence worthy of a blockbuster.

That’s a lesson all writers can use.

Every story hits a rough spot. A dreaded “this sucks” epiphany. And it’s there we’re tempted to sulk away from the laptop and drown our sorrows in fresh-baked cookies over a Netflix marathon.

But we need to press on.

Even if our imagination is so strapped that the best we can manage in the heat of a lover’s quarrel mid-chapter is, “Please! I beg of you! Oh, please don’t leave me!” Sow that cornfield, sister! Lay out that cheese, brother! (As I’m doing this very moment.)

It’s all fixable, if we’ll lay out the broken pieces.

Let those awkward scenes serve their purpose in getting us to The End.

Then let’s keep a few tucked away. Not to remind us of our shortcomings, but our ability to overcome.

Your turn: What’s your favorite animated movie, and have you watched the deleted scenes?

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