Writing and Fighting

 So glad to find this video on a post I linked up to this morning. I needed to hear this. I actually needed to hear this about a week ago when I was reading my stuff and just shaking my head. I KNOW that there is a better story than what is written down. Its there inside me. I can see it in my head like a movie. I hear music from epic movie soundtracks like Batman or Braveheart or Lord of the Rings and I can just close my eyes and SEE Cornelius fighting his way through the bad guys when he invades his own capitol city; trying to win it back from the 'evil usurper'.  I can SEE Anna struggling through the alpine snow drifts as quietly as she can, trying not to set off an avalanche, desperate to get the 'vital message' through, into the right hands. I can SEE their first kiss. I can SEE their arguments and their tears. I can SEE his expression as he watches at her, when she's working on something else and is totally oblivious. I can SEE the pain written all over her face when she thinks she's lost him.

And then I read the sentences, the paragraphs, the chapters...and they do not make the vision clear. They are like smudgy sunglasses, just making the picture more obscured.

But thankfully....Thankfully...there are moments when the words flow. There are the moments when I lean back from the computer, after a two-hour wrestle and read a page or a scene that is...Awesome! 

I'm not bragging! 

I'm telling the truth! I  will read it and I get chills and I think, "Did that just come from me?"

So, thank goodness for artists that have come before, who let you know that the first draft, the second draft, and sometimes even the thirtieth draft, will stink. Or at least when you come down from the clouds and read it when you are sober, it will stink. And the real work of writing is the revising and the editing. 

Because the story is like Michelangelo's huge block of marble. The story is in there. It is waiting to be discovered and uncovered.

Just keep chipping away...writing and editing...and the masterpiece will, eventually, be revealed.

But it does take work.

So work through it, fight through it, keep going. 

Until everyone can SEE what you've been seeing all along.