I have been stuck at home in the snow, overwhelmed with work projects and trying to keep my life in order which is a hard task as a single, working mother. Unfortunately certain areas of life have fallen to the wayside because of this. One of those would be my personal writing. I have done plenty of thinking of the characters and the story. They are familiar companions at this point. What I have done little of is actual writing.
The other day when I was thinking of my writing though I started to envision, not the continuation of the story and where I had left it off, but rather a new beginning. I started to re-write the beginning with the idea that it would flow better with the story line which may be true but it got me to wondering when we look back to what we have written because we are stuck and can not move forward where we are in our current writing. I think in life everyone does this. They are scared to move forward or don't know what the next step will be and so it is easy to fall back to the past as a comfort because it is done and completed and the results already proven.
The problem with not moving forward with the story and going back to the beginning is that it is easy to convince yourself that you are just editing or re-editing so that the work can flow better. In reality you are re-writing and then the inevitable feeling that the story has become too chaotic and unfocused. You want to move forward with Chapter Twenty-Five (as in my case) but the only thing you are thinking about is the beginning and re-writing it.
Stop! Breathe! Then ask yourself these questions:
1. Is this really necessary now or am I avoiding a difficult passage by re-creating an old one?
2. Will it add value to the story? If you are going to return to the beginning and re-write entire passages before you are ready to edit the book fully is it because you know it will add value to the story. Think carefully because when you finish the initial writing process and the book is completed so that you begin to edit, is that the first place you go to again re-create it.
3. Why now? Sometimes going back though can be good because it gives you insight into how to move forward. If you answered the first two questions or, decided to ignore the answers, maybe what you want most is a way to get through a difficult passage. The current chapter I am on currently is very emotional and revealing and the strength of all the sentiments may be holding me down and unable to know how to proceed and get through the emotion. Focusing on another area may do just that and give a push or insight on how to progress.
Overall, I think it is common for anyone to want to look backwards in order to move forward. We all learn from our past mistakes, or hope to. This includes characters in a story. Their lives are linear just as ours. If a character is written right they become real to the author and those characters' lives are just like ours where they have ambitions and contentions and life stories to overcome. Maybe it is best then to not look back until you get to the end and the true editing process begins. I think we all have a bit of Lot's wife in us though...we yearn to look back at what we know and not forward to what we don't even if we know it will turn us into a pillar of salt.
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