I’m doing it. Maybe not as efficiently as I’d like to, but I’m doing it. Slowly but surely I’m making my way back to my daily routine.
My novel progressed a little today. I did some research by re-reading some of my favorite scenes from my favorite novel, and that helped me more than I expected it would.
Initially I had forbidden myself to read any fantasy novels while writing my first draft, but for the past few weeks, every time I think of my novel, I’m flooded by the worrying feeling that I’m copying scenes from my favorite novels.
The worry got so bad that it was holding me back from writing, which is why today I caved and finally read the scenes in question. And I’m happy to say that, even though there may be some similarity at times in the base structure, my story is plenty original enough to feel like a different journey, especially considering that this is the first draft and that there will still be plenty of edits.
This was great news for me!
And since reading these scenes helped me this much, I also allowed myself to read a few other scenes to help me get inspired for a few moments in my novel in which I felt stuck and was wondering how my favourite authors had tackled the same type of situations. As you might know, I have to be very careful when it comes to doing research for my novel, as I have a tendency of unintentionally using it as a procrastination method.
But for today I think my research was helpful, and now I’m going to do my best to use what I found, and get back to writing my novel, without falling back into my procrastination wheel.
I also came away with a couple of new ideas I’m excited to explore for my protagonist.