Pushing Through Page Fright

First off, y’all have to check out this fabulous review of Red by Trish at YABound, along with my mini-interview.

I’ve been dipping a toe back into writing this week.  And I mean, like, my pinky toe.  I had 188 words on Monday.  261 yesterday.  I’m hoping to keep increasing my daily output over the next several days so that I am back to normal production levels by the start of Round 4 of ROW80 on Monday.

I have, as I’ve said before, a decentish outline.  But I’m following up with consequences to the events in Devil’s Eye and my brain keeps turning over possibilities that will slightly change things.  For me it’s a logic problem.  X happened. If Sophie and Mick do Y, then this is the chain of events that follow.  If they do Z, then this is how it’s likely to go down.  I want them to do something smart, even if it winds up backfiring on them (which it does).  I want to make sure that the reader, particularly readers coming from Devil’s Eye, don’t think that they are morons.

I popped up on GoogleTalk this morning to spew my latest shower thoughts (which, given that they are pre-caffeine, are often incoherent) to Susan.  To which her reply was something to the effect of, “I don’t care what you pick, just go with one and make me believe it as a reader.” [my summation, she was a lot more long-winded and tactful]

Sometimes you just need to be bitch slapped.

I’m still working out the details, but I’m framing it differently, more in a “how does this serve the book?” kind of way than a “what’s the logical progression of this?” kind of way.  Which is more productive and helpful.  I think what I need is a compromise between Y and Z…

What do you do when you have page fright?

5 thoughts on “Pushing Through Page Fright

  1. Page fright! That’s an awesome term that I’ve never heard before! But I definitely have page fright; typically mine’s when I’ve gotten away from the WIP for a few days and don’t know where I’m going. I panic that I’ve ‘lost touch’ with my world/characters…and completely freak. XD Then I tend to sit down, re-read, re-outline, and try and work through it (despite the anxiety that comes with that. I think all writers are just nervous creatures!) and it typically works out 🙂

  2. I have to admit, I don’t think I have ever had a true case of page fright. I have dwindled on the edge of that abyss several times, but always just force myself to write something. In your head you already know which path you are going to choose for Mich and Sophie. It gets lost sometimes in the clutter of a writers brain but it is there, and I find just sitting myself down and forcing the words brings it out. Ok sometimes I have to delete the first page or so because it is just waffle, but by the end of that first page the good stuff is there.
    Keep going Kait, you are a great writer and it will come back to you.

  3. Oh boy. I know how that goes. Right now, I’m still working through patching any hole in my outline. I’m finding it helps me with the page fright. I’ve done portions of the outline where I split it and followed 2 different possibilities until I found the one I wanted to keep.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.