Stephanie Ingram

I’m notoriously bad at planning ahead. I’m not just talking about my writing either. I’m talking about life in general. Short-term, long-term, any-term. Want to know what I’m making for dinner this evening? So do I. Around 3:00 it will occur to me that I have to actually make something, which by this point in life, shouldn’t be such a surprise. After all, this dinner thing happens every day no matter how hard I try to avoid it. (And believe me, I keep trying to avoid it.)

I’m not ordinarily bothered by my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants approach. After all, dinner still ends up on the table by 6:00 every day one way or the other. Some days I’m not quite sure how I pull it off, but I do, and I take a certain level of satisfaction from the challenge.

And then there is the writing. Ah, the writing.

I love to sit down with no real sense of who my characters are and why they are showing up on my page. I get an image in my head of someone or some interesting scenario and I run with it. I like it this way. It feels fun and fresh and I love being surprised by what comes out. I don’t expect everything to make sense in my first draft. This is the way I’ve done it for years and no matter what I’ve read to the contrary by those who prefer to do detailed outlines ahead of writing, I’ve never wanted to do it any other way than my own way.

But there is a downside to my method. Maybe it’s called “I’m getting old and wise” or maybe it’s just a shift in priorities? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve written 70,000 words on my current manuscript and that’s where it’s stayed because I honestly have no idea where to go from here. Every time I try to add something to the story, I end up hating it. In total, I’ve probably written closer to 200,000 words. It’s just that most of them didn’t survive the “next round” of rethinking and rewriting. This is the first time I’ve sat down to write a story and it didn’t magically unfold in front of me the way I like. Any other story and I would have scrapped it a long time ago.

There is something about this particular story that keeps me hanging on though and I’m hoping it’s not just the fact that I hate throwing away 70,000 perfectly fine words. I’m hoping that it’s because there is still a story worth reading hiding in there somewhere. Is this the story that is going to teach me the “lesson”? Is this the story that convinces me that everyone who tried to warn me to write an outline before page one was actually trying to save me from this madness? Tsk tsk… I should have listened.

Whatever the story is, it’s still hanging out there in some sort of tortured limbo state of first draft nightmares with little hope of becoming anything else at the moment. I’ve been pushing myself to finish it before the summer but clearly, that isn’t going to happen. The husband keeps telling me to put it aside and work on something else for a while. It’s a good idea but it isn’t working because the longer I go without progress, the more I start pulling my hair out in frustration. I have a good idea for the next novel but I can’t focus on it until I finally put my current work-in-progress out of its misery.

I’m in a bad place to be and it’s all because I dove in without my water wings and I’m still drowning. Please tell me there is someone that can cast me a line and pull me out? Thoughts? Suggestions? Have you ever been in this sort of situation and what did you do to save the work and your sanity?

In the meantime, that next novel I mentioned is not going down the same way. I’m already planning to plan. I’m going to do brainstorming, outlines, character sketches. I’m going to answer questions before I am forced to write the scenes that lead up to them. I’m going in with my flashlight next time and I hope to find my way to THE END with a few less bumps and bruises along the way.

Oh, and if you really want to be kind and help me out then by all means, buy my books in mass quantities so I can afford to hire a cook and not worry about what’s for dinner tonight. 😉

Happy New Blog Day! I figured since I went to all the trouble to create this thing, that I should probably put something in it, right? Where to start? Hmmm… well, since this is essentially a replacement for a blog that I created through blogspot, I decided to choose my most popular post and copy it over to here to help fill some empty space until I get back into a regular writing pattern. Hope you enjoy it and as always, feel free to welcome me with comments, follows, and general bloggy love. All is appreciated!

***

I’m a writer so it stands to reason that I love writing. If you don’t believe me, give me a glass or two of wine and be prepared to listen to me go on and on about it for hours. I’m pretty passionate about the subject, probably to the point of being terribly annoying. There really isn’t anything about writing that I don’t love, hence my second lovable post for the month of February to ramble on about it.

I have to admit I’m always surprised when I come across blog posts written by fellow writers titled “Why Do I Write?” or something along these lines. It’s a popular topic amongst writers for some strange reason. But no matter how many times I come across this subject, I’m still confused. It’s never occurred to me at any point in my life to question why I write and I certainly don’t feel compelled to justify my obsession to anyone else. So, am I missing something here … or are they?

I’m a writer. I write. It really is just that simple. In my opinion, a more appropriate question to ask would be “Why Shouldn’t I Write?” and maybe my readers are more equipped to answer a question like that than I am. (Her grammar sucks! She can’t spell! She can’t put together believable characters or an intelligible plot to save her life! Her stories are going to cause the destruction of society as we know it!) Fine, fine. I get the idea.

But the point I’m trying to make is that really … I don’t care. Maybe you have your reasons why I shouldn’t keep writing and maybe they are justifiable and maybe they are not. But is that going to stop me from writing? Heck no! I’m a writer, remember? I write. I eat, I sleep, I dream, I breathe, I write.

I’ve been putting words on paper for a very long time, pretty much since the day I discovered that I could and that those words could actually affect people. If I had to pinpoint a moment, I would drag you back to the fourth grade with me. Imagine nine year-old Stephanie on the playground with a small group of girls. For whatever reason (and I don’t remember how it started), we decided to create our own play. Our teacher, Mr. Nega, was so impressed (or amused?) with the idea that he allowed us to perform the play in front of our class during actual class time.

I’ve never been the outgoing type and truth be told, I think I made my way through my entire school career barely saying a word so I wasn’t bound for a career in the performing arts. But something about putting those words together, seeing a story form on paper, and then enacted for a group of people who could react … that made something click. I don’t remember many things from my days in grade school but I will never forget that moment.

I wrote many more plays after that, none that were ever performed in front of a fourth grade audience, or any other audience for that matter, but I kept on writing anyway. Why? Because I had fallen in love, desperate, unavoidable, undeniable, unchangeable love. Because I’d discovered I was a writer … and I write.

(Of course, there was the Mother’s Day play that my best friend down the street and I created together as a present to our moms. We set the story around an Olivia Newton John album that we both liked and I’m sure it was a grueling experience to sit through it but our mothers happily indulged us anyway. Thanks, Mom!)

Grade school came and went. Writing didn’t. Junior high and high school came and went. Writing became an even bigger obsession. Now it wasn’t just plays anymore. Now I wrote poems, journal entries, short stories, and letters to pen pals! Now I wasn’t content to just write in English anymore. Now I wrote in French and Spanish too, at least as much as my limited vocabulary in those languages would allow me.

Really, I should be sent to writer’s rehab. As you can see, it was becoming a problem. And it still is.

I filled volumes in college. (It would probably be painful to read them.)

I’ve never questioned why I write. I’ve pondered the possibility that my stories will never really be worth reading or well-received by others but even that isn’t a reason to stop writing. I am simply bound by a love affair with words that is never-ending. Since I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m too lazy to go back to a life of working in the corporate world, then I guess you’re stuck with my writing a little bit longer.

So, what about you? Do you define the reasons why you do what you love?