Sometimes writing is a long hard slog!

I have to admit that I've been a bit lax with my writing lately i.e. I haven't worked on it enough!  That's mainly due to the fact that writing my novel is becoming a bit of a struggle.  I pretty much know what I want to happen in it; it's just that when I'm writing I find that I inevitably embellish parts or change things that I had never considered changing.  It seems to evolve of its own accord.

I find it very hard to stick rigidly to my initial plan and maybe that's a good thing.  But it does mean possible rewrites - I recently inserted a whole new (long!) chapter - and that makes for a difficult time trying to get to grips with it and make progress.  At the moment I'm finding it hard to make what I'm writing interesting as it's to do with my character going over her overdraft limit.  The story, although third person narrative, is from her point of view so I'm describing her thoughts and feelings about what's happened, how she's going to deal with it etc.

I do wonder if lots of (maybe all??) writers struggle with something they've been writing for a while at some point and get a little bit tired of it all.  I've been working on this novel since the beginning of the year; maybe for a lot of you that's not that long, but I guess for me it's about keeping the momentum going, keeping my interest in what I'm doing alive and that can be a challenge.

What are your thoughts?  Let me know!

Improving my story after reviews

Having the opening chapters of my story reviewed on youwriteon.com has certainly been an eye opener.  Different people have suggested different changes I could make to my story.  One suggestion that's been useful has been to use more similes and metaphors to make my work come alive a bit more.  Another comment was to think about my lead character's motivation - why hasn't she just left home already and got a job if she hates life on the farm so much?  Why is she relying on her inheritance from her father to get what she wants?

This comment was particularly interesting to me but also troublesome.  It made me think that maybe I need to look again at this character, perhaps make her a bit younger so that she has to rely on her father for money and so that the idea of her waiting impatiently for her inheritance makes more sense.  But it's troublesome in that changing my character's age and thinking about her motivation will require revision of my story.  I'm still writing it at the moment and I've made the decision to carry on writing the story until I finish and then go back and make major changes.

The problem is I've been down this route before.  I was working on a fantasy novel for older children last year.  I had written a lot of it before I had feedback from various people who all gave me different suggestions as to how I could improve it.  Without finishing the story, I attempted to make those changes and in the end I abandoned it as I got so bogged down in the nitty gritty of revision.  It just took all the pleasure out of it for me.  I ended up very confused as to how I ought to change my story and how to fit these changes in to what I already had.

So in retrospect I feel that for me personally as a writer, it's better for me to get the first draft of my story finished before attempting to make major changes/rewrites.  That way I (hopefully) won't lose the pleasure of telling a story and I can allow myself space to experiment, even if it means lots of revision later on.  Do let me know what you think about rewriting and your experiences.

Writing a sex scene!

My novel is gradually coming on.  I got quite a lot done yesterday and part of what I was writing made me wonder how other writers tackle it: namely a sex scene!  I hadn't really written one before, so it was new territory to me.  I was writing about a very brief one night stand and so I didn't want it to seem all romantic, because in this case it certainly wasn't!  At the same time I didn't want it to be corny or cliched.  So.  I showed my husband what I'd written and he read it, said it was good but made some suggestions on how I could improve it, which I will keep in mind.  The scene may need a few rewrites, but I'm keeping it short anyway!  I'm a little bashful about showing what I've written to anyone else, but if I want people to read my novel then I'll have to get used to that.  Anyway, as always any comments/suggestions welcome.  And maybe tell me how you write sex scenes into your stories!