Deleting four and a half pages of work.

I can hear the heating kicking in, its a cold February morning. Tanya has just left for work with half a day ahead of her. The cat is nestled into a cute little ball on her tree and Wheezy Waiter is recapping some of his videos on the telly. Its a slow start, I got up late much to my dismay and chose a black coffee. It might be a day of once more planning to get my habits in order and organise a routine that might never make it out of the day. 

But that isn't what I want to talk about today, because that is boring and everyone has boring shite going on. Why would you come to some writers blog and read about his boring routine when you have your own?

Yesterday I wrote four and a half pages of work for Bulldog 3, I then read them back and hated every premise I was building for the ending chapters of Franks story. So I deleted them all and started again. I felt better deleting it then I did writing them, which is a new feeling for me and I wanted to investigate that. This idea that killing your darlings might be a plot concept but maybe its an editing tool as well, killing dead pages and shitty paragraphs before you let them even challenge their existence.

In the pages I deleted, Frank was summarising an idea for an ambush but it had some creepy overtone that I didn't see coming and hated it after finishing it. So I said "I hate this" to myself and then called Tanya, my wife and ghost reader, into the room to discuss. After which she also shared the idea that "this isn't good" so we scraped it and it felt fucking amazing.

This was the first time I went scorched earth on my own work instead of trying to edit it down to a palatable scroll of narrative, I just killed it dead and it felt amazing. Writing is hard, often times I reach a wall and go from 100mph to a flat tyred crawl. This was one of those times and as I wadded through my attempt to get through this chapter, I wasn't creating anything worth reading. Realising that and just using it as an excuse to get on the page and write, with no lasting merit, felt like a great exercise. Just warming up to a good idea, which after a brief chat with Tan, did arrive and we mapped out an alternate route for the chapters midway point. 

What I want that aspiring writer to take from my mistakes, my learnings, would be that you can just delete your shit work. Just delete it. Don't stress yourself out thinking "well maybe if it do this" or "I can save it but it will be weak". Just highlight it all, delete it and chalk it up to exercise for your writing brain. Bad ideas normally are a prelude to better ideas taking their place.

Anyway, its Wednesday which means two things. Arsenal play tonight and I have work tomorrow at the kennel. So my day today will be spent doing some weights, tidying the flat, cuddling the cat and writing some words that hopefully progress Bulldog 3 one step closer to its finale. 

Enjoy your day, have no opinions on the weather and remember that Goblins hunt in packs. Stay healthy, you ludicrous little sand worms.

P.s. Didn't have any photos relevant as I will literally NEVER plug in my phone to get a photo that fits these blogs. So instead, enjoy Angels paw.