Struggling

Funnily enough, until a couple of hours ago, I didn’t really have an idea on what to blog about. We’re still going through the motion of trying to fix the things we broke and trying to shape everything into what will ultimately be our world, our characters and our story. Which although it is a thrilling topic, it’s not something I can write an elaborate blog post about, purely because it’s still a work in progress and at our speed, it will remain a work in progress indefinitely. What we’re struggling with the most, is the fact that we like to think everything can and needs to be improved. In some cases it works, in others we try to take away what makes certain characters who they are. We push on, change more things, but where we think we’re doing it in their best interests, we’re only making matters worse. We’re perfectionists and we’re our own worst enemy. We don’t see a good story in front of us as it hits us in the face, we tend to overwork it, and thus ruin it.  

Which is why we’re now on the fence of do we, or do we not put a gigantic cross in everything we’ve decided for them and start over. Really listen to the characters to fill their needs, even if they sometimes don’t make sense to us. Will it put us back gravely to make such a drastic decision?  Yes.  But, given the amount of time we’ve already spent trying to mend broken characters, and finding we’re far from undoing it all…?  

Right now, we’re at the point where we just can’t move forwards. We like to think we have it all sorted out and to some extent we do, more than we have in the past, but there’s a lot missing that we did have before. Which is perhaps the most frustrating thing about doing what we’re doing, the going back and forth and with both of us being such perfectionists, we won’t really let ourselves move forwards.  

So we will see how tonight goes, and how the next week goes. Maybe one of these days we will learn our lesson, maybe one of these days we will be comfortable with our own potential for fantasy. Either way, there’s still a long way for us to go.. But even if sometimes we can get a little bit exasperated, especially during times where we have to go back and forth so much, it’s part of our process and it will be worth the effort. Some day!  

As always, we are learning as we go, and we’re slowly catching on to the whole needing our characters to be able to get anywhere at all! It has taken us a while, but at least we’re now trying to take sensible steps to make sure everything is in place. Not just for us, but for them, for the story, for everything around it. We just… need the reminder from time to time, and those reminders like to whack us over the head with the force of a stampede of elephants.  

Which we really do need.  

That and a thousand alarm bells going off at random intervals during the day to remind me to do the blog. Thank you Clara!  

Charlotte