I'll Get There Eventually

Thanks to everyone who contacted me with encouraging words in response to yesterday's whining and venting. I decided to post about the frustration I was feeling because, hey, what's the point of having a blog if you never use it to complain? And I also wanted to express that writing is often unpleasant and tedious, just like any other kind of work, and that's no reason to give up on it.

In terms of focus, this week has the been the best one I've had in a long time. I'm holding myself to a new schedule that I think I'll be able to stick with, and I'm getting a lot of work done. "A lot" is still only a very few pages each day, and as I said, that makes me impatient. However, it's significantly more progress than I'd be making if I wasn't buckling down, and it doesn't look as though writing any faster is going to be an option, so this is the rate of progress I have to live with.

Some day that's not as soon as I'd like, I will get to the end of this draft, and it will be the story I want it to be. And then, yes, all you people who have been eagerly asking when you can see the manuscript will get your chance to tell me what I still don't have right.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ On the Diversity in YA Fiction blog, Laura Goode discusses considerations for writing characters with A Skin Not Your Own: "I think it’s this anxiety about imagining a racial experience not your own that leads so many white authors to write one-dimensional BBF (brown/black best friend) characters, who only show up to support the white protagonist in a time of need, ask exposition-inducing questions, or basically prove that the protagonist is not a BWP [Bad White Person]."

→ William Skidelsky at the Guardian Books Blog investigates the true price of publishing: "I have always assumed – like, I imagine, most people – that the high cost of hardbacks is down to the fact that they are much more expensive than paperbacks to produce. But in fact this isn't the case at all."