Going faster and faster

I’ve worked on a man­u­script for ten months.  Maybe more. I no longer can remem­ber.  It has in fact gone well.  I have worked with care, revis­ing as I go, work­ing (I hope) with care, skill. I know the plot well enough so there are no sur­pris­es in my head. At least I think so. But as I approach the ending—and the due date—something shifts. Work­ing day after day, all day, I yearn for the release of “The end.” I begin to go faster and faster, know­ing I am writ­ing with­out finesse, with no fin­ish to the sur­face, or any­where else for that mat­ter. The hard part is know­ing that I am not writ­ing well.  It is NOT good at all. BUT—it is there, and I know (I tell myself) I can, and will return, to rewrite what I’m slap­ping down on paper many times.

At this point some­thing can and does often hap­pen. Since I’m writ­ing very fast, it is the emo­tion that is most­ly com­ing through, and that is the pre­cise time I dis­cov­er some truth about the char­ac­ters that I have not seen before. It is not where I thought I would go, but go I do, at this point trust­ing my emo­tion much more than my intel­lect. I am read­ing what I am writ­ing, and let­ting the text take me where it may. And while it may sound corny, if I don’t have strong emo­tions at the end I know I have not done my job.

Some­times a writer sim­ply has to trust the writ­ing momen­tum, the instincts, not the thought. More often than not it will get you there—wherever that there is.

Trust the read­er in you.