i think i can, i think i can

[Jane]

I'm finding that I can use this blog as an accompanying place to write my thoughts on my writing tribulations and trials. As I am executing the writing exercises and trying to make enough time for creativity to emerge from the heap of initial crap (or compost, as another book so eloquently describes), I find that another voice is perched in the background, listening, mulling over and reviewing my progress / non-progress in my word-laden endeavours. Unfortunately, most of those thoughts tend to occur when I'm sitting in the bus or subway, so by the time I'm sitting in bed with the laptop, I cannot quite remember what I was thinking, only that it might have been interesting enough to record.

I think I have to start doing more handwriting.

The facts are that I am slowing piecing together bits of writing exercises and samples, and although I had the fortune to be blessed with an inspiration for a plotline, getting there has been made harder by the fact that I don't know yet how to connect everything, especially the beginning and ending. Worse, I have not decided what will be the beginning and ending, and if that is the case, where do I even begin with building the bridge? But yes, I do have a plotline, one that excites me.

Our instructor today said that "writing is 99% editing" and that (paraphrasing here slightly since my memory is failing me this late at night) one has to stomach his/her own writing enough to improve it. Do I have the persistence to keep going back to the same piece of writing over and over, churning out draft after draft? I would like to at least try.