Rewriting the Novel: Emotional Scenes

What do these things have in common?

• Barre chords on guitar
• Cast shadows in painting
• Emotional scenes in writing

The obvious answer: What am I bad at, Alex?

Wouldn’t it be nice if they all had something in common? Then I would be bad at just one thing. What do they have in common? 

Is it a deft hand? Cast shadows, yes, don’t want to be too strong or too faint. Emotional scenes, don’t want to overdo those, either. But you can’t over or under do barre chords. If you press hard enough to make them work, then they sound the same if you press even harder. Don’t need a deft hand for barre chords. What you don't need is fat stubby fingers, which I do have. 

Maybe it’s all about embracing the darkness. Shadows are dark, Barre chords are heavy rock, and the emotional scenes I’m dodging are all dark. But seriously, I shy away from the dark? 

Maybe I do. All but the midpoint and resolution are almost totally done, and the heartache comes in those two parts. (Spoilers!)

Perhaps I just need to plow in there and do it badly. If it’s bad it can only get better. And it’s easy to erase an awkward paragraph, even easier than painting over a poor cast shadow. 

Ugh. Not the fun part, though. I’ll just need to dive in and go all telenovela, and then scale it back.

Comments

[KC]

do it badly. Go for it! (sorry it is hard)

[TheQueen]

KC - I’m doing it! Especially this week, because I am off work. I’m writing the end, then they middle, then filling in the holes.

[KC]

Good work! Even if it's technically bad work for a bit, practicing the things we’re bad at is really the only way to get better at them, unfortunately. (and it is so hard, when there are things that we are not bad at, that are available to do, to work on the things that we are just bad at.)

That said, maybe you will have unprecedented Telenovela capabilities.:-)

[TheQueen]

KC - it’s possible I am writing the seminal oil field telenovela.