Courage

1.

I need some.

In fact, I think I need loads of it.

2.

I’m seriously contemplating Dutch courage. Except I don’t think it’s good for me to do stuff that could lead to addictions.

I already have an obsessive personality. If I add addictive to that, I think the rest of my life will just go down the toilet.

3.

I have been driven to this because I’ve realised my barrier to finishing this book is me.

I mean, I’ve always known that. It’s generally true of everything one wishes to accomplish.

4.

The difficulty that I mentioned a few days ago has become clearer to me, if not at all simpler to resolve.

I have the ‘small story’. By this, I mean the storyline of the characters in the novel. But I haven’t yet been able to put the ‘big picture’ into writing.

If the small story is what’s on the chessboard, then the big picture IS the chessboard.

Don’t ask me how I play chess without a chessboard because I will hurt you.

5.

I sent a brain-dribbling-out email to Nadia a few months back, maybe late summer last year, and looking it over, I’ve realised that all that was in there was the small story.

I know I have the big picture. It’s In My Head.

It just never appears to translate into what’s on the screen. Or if it does, it’s buried so deep even I can’t see it.

I acknowledge that this has always been a problem for me. How else would I have achieved partial manuscripts with only 2 characters?

But I’ve never felt this as keenly, maybe because I never had enough of the small story to realise that there was still stuff lacking.

6.

So back to courage.

I need some, I think, to get the big picture out of my head and in words.

Doesn’t matter how awful, or how bad it is. I need to get it out where I can see it so I can tear it down and fix it.

Which sounds so easy, and is probably why all the writing advice ever given to me boils down to:

Write the damn thing. Fix it later.