Saving my darlings...

The original opening for The Silver Bowl has been bugging me again. I've gone back to the bargaining phase with my muse now. I'm going to have one more crack at trying to fit the original opening line in, but it's only going in if I can make it work. I've tried and failed again and again to make it work in the past, but I still can't convince myself that it's impossible - and that's why it's so hard to murder this darling. If I still can't get it working, I'll try throwing it up on rasfc.

I've got a suspicion that it might just be a matter of finding the right voice - and of being prepared to spell out some things that were only implied in the original.

Outlining revisited

One of the reasons I outline is because I'm worried about losing all the stuff in my head before I have time to write it down properly. I don't get much time to write each day, and sometimes I might go for days without a chance to do some real writing. And I also tend to over-revise a lot, so my net output is actually quite slow.

My thought today is: maybe this is one of those crisis/opportunity things. I wonder if next time I should try writing a draft with absolutely no outlining and to use that fear of losing stuff as a positive thing - to force me to get the draft down on paper/disk before it fades.