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It’s taken me all day to bridge from the new Jason and Anita scene to the rest of the book. God, I thought I was never going to get there. I’ve been averaging between six and eight pages a day over most of the holiday work. I actually took Yule day itself off, because the day before I’d finished the largest new scene. The one I’d been struggling with, and did, I think, two blogs about the difficulties of trying to write it. No one was playing hard to get by the time I finished the scene. Nope, everybody was on board and having a good time. At last.
All I had to do today was to do a paragraph and a few sentences to bridge from old to new. How hard could it be? Famous last words. Oh, I thought, even worse last words; this is simple, compared to what I’ve been doing. Yeah, right. All, bloody, day, and I had nothing to show for it. It is only now in the last few moments that I’ve finished the transition.
I finally realized part of the problem. I was trying to describe something both difficult and simple, and make it very real on paper. The larger act of sex is often easier to describe in writing, then the smaller bits of it. It’s taken me all day to describe that feeling after really good sex when you both fall asleep exhausted; that goes for the girl, too. I mean really, really good sex. That wonderful exhausted collapse when you’ve not only had great sex, but you’ve let everything else go, too. All the stress, the worry, the deadlines, the problems; it’s all gotten washed away on a tide of foreplay, orgasm, the feel of skin under your finger tips, the slide of bodies, and hands, the sleekness of sweat along his spine, and then you just fall. Fall into that wonderful cocoon of exhaustion and pleasure spent. You wake up a little while later, because you seldom seem to sleep through the night when you fall asleep like this, I don’t know why, but I’ve found it true. The last few sentences I struggled to describe was that sound that a man makes, when he just wakes from that special kind of sleep, that sound that is part humor, but not a laugh; part pleasure, and all contentment. And everything I’ve written here, is mostly, not, what I wrote in the scene. Because this is me telling you, what I’ve been trying to write all day, and in the actual book, you don’t tell, you show. Showing is so much harder than telling. All day I’ve struggled to describe something so simple, so important, so real, and finally, done.
I’d beat myself up all day, because I was struggling so hard with something that was so simple. But, simple is often harder to capture on paper than complicated. Trying to appeal to a reader’s senses, so that they feel, smell, taste, and touch, what you’re doing, can be incredibly difficult. I think, I forgot that for a few hours. I forgot that sometimes what I do really isn’t easy. Does it sound funny that I would forget that? When I’ve had a day or so of the writing going well, I do sometimes forget that really when the muse is elsewhere it’s hard, damn work. But you don’t just come to work when the muses are fluttering about. You come to work when things are due, and deadlines loom. You come to work, because if you don’t show up the muse doesn’t know where to find you. But, I’m done for the day. Like stick a fork in me, honey, done. Even if I could force myself to work anymore, it would be like putting that perfect roast back in the oven for just a little bit longer. All you get is dry beef, when what you want is moist, thick, melt-in-your-mouth, just this side of pink, meat.
So, even though I have less than a page to show for an all day work session, I’m not going to try and force myself to get my four page minamum. It would be over-cooking the roast, and I’d come to the desk tomorrow tired, and not wanting to write.