Yes, I’ve hit that point. You know the one: there you are, plugging away at your masterpiece, and suddenly you realize that everything you’re writing is garbage, nothing but pointless drivel. It doesn’t add to the plot or develop the characters or set the scene or do anything else even remotely useful.
We’ve all been there, right?
So what is a writer to do?
Keep writing, of course. Write the bad stuff. Let the garbage sit there on the page. Write more of it.
Why? I mean, you know that it’s all going to get cut in the edit, so why keep adding to it?
Because eventually you will write yourself out of that spot and the plot will advance and the characters will develop and the setting… Er, let’s not go there. I suck at scenes and settings.
(Plus, you need to get it out of your system.)
But the point is, keep writing, even the garbage. Especially the garbage. Because when you go back in a few months to edit, you may find that it’s not as bad or as pointless as you are thinking that it is, or you may find a few treasures among the trash.
And if there aren’t, well, then, it’s really cathartic to put a big red X through it when you edit.
And remember: “The first draft of anything is shit.”
Who am I to argue with Hemingway?
Novel Notes 