I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 47th: Challenges

Howdy ho-ho-ho-ho! Merry Thanksgiving to one and all, and welcome to another episode of Veterinarian Hospital, where the quacks have gone to the dogs...ummm...Welcome to It's A Man's Life in the Blogland...ummm....ummm....Welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where sometimes he really wonders why.

Today's post is about challenges, specifically, those that you inflict on yourself in the course of writing journey. And how you meet and conquer them.

Using me as an example, I like challenging myself when it comes to writing. Small, medium or large, I have no problem tackling most of my self-inflicted challenges (although the large ones are currently on the back burner, so to speak).

For example, I write adult fiction of the saucy kind. I like it and it fits my writing persona like a glove. Most other types do not, simply because trying to censor myself to fit other genres (i.e. YA) I find particular loathsome. But every so often, I would find myself twiddling with the idea of writing something super clean. A few years ago, I decided to act on that particular idea, and about a month later, I had a very nice clean short story that became the first story that I had traditionally published.

Another way that I like challenging myself is to write in non-traditional (for me) point of views/narratives. I have been told by a few editors that my current trilogy has a good narrative voice that is reminiscent of Douglas Adams, so that's something I can use as inspiration when I return to it.

Non-traditional for me is to not write in a 3rd person point of view, which is what most books are written in these days. I've increasingly finding myself wanting to write my stories in the first person, which is second most challenging way to write a story (first is writing in the 2nd person, which I have attempted. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy). So fare I've had moderate success in doing so (self-pubbed one book that was done in a mixture of 1st and 3rd), but this one (working title Time To Go) will be my very first written entirely in the 1st person point of view.

So far, editing has been a beast. I've had to edit every single page of the story so that everything is in 1st person. I've had extensive passages where I had a jumping of two and from of 1st and 3rd person. Two weeks of applying my editing notes got me up-to-speed, as well as 5 less pages to worry about.

I'm still taking notes as I go along, mostly to reconcile a few inconsistent plot points, but realistically it's gonna be a heavy slog to get this done. I originally started/left off in it back in 2014, so it's been a real adventure on trying to remember the plot points. On the plus side, I actually do know how I want to end it, and what the ending will be. The real adventure will be getting there w/o getting disgusted again.

Adventures in writing: when you really want to shake things up to the point of going so far against the grain that you get splinters just from looking at it.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved