53: Getting It Done
4/17/2013
Just finished Badru’s scene. Took me exactly a month for a little over nine pages. Pulling teeth. But it turned out okay, and that’s what matters I guess. Sometimes I think just getting done is what should matter, worrying about quality later. But that isn’t how I work. I give it my absolute best every step of the way. Every draft. Pulling teeth.
Once again, I found the dialogue sequences flowing fun and easy, and the setting of the stage, the diction and syntax of the narrative between the dialogue is slow and painful.
The trouble with this scene is that because Diallo isn’t speaking, Badru ends up talking to herself the whole time. It’s hard to keep that interesting, and even harder to keep it from coming off like a diatribe. Hopefully I will be able to soften that preachy quality in future rewrites. It’s plenty good enough for right now.
It helped a lot to have Bakar, Tamal, and Dougga pass through the scene. Or at least their voices. That was more or less a last minute surprise addition. That even helped me place where Diallo will be coming upon Alena in the next scene, because knowing the three boys will follow the creek trail to the river, Diallo will go over the hill to the river to avoid them, passing the ceremonial pit along the way where Alena will be dancing.
I wasn’t sure where or how I was going to be able to make the next scene play out in a natural way. So, this works out perfectly now. Everything happens for a reason and works out like… providence.
Yeah, right.
Present-Day Reflection
7/17/2026
Getting it done is not all that matters, of course. But convincing myself it is can often be the very thing I need to get off my ass. Once the pressure of doing it correctly is removed, I find things generally work out okay. It’s very rare that whatever I end up putting down on paper isn’t in any way useable.
And things only end up looking like they happened for a reason once I’ve forgotten the difficulty of shaping my initial garbage into something… not so garbagy. In this way, focusing on just getting it done is helpful.
Better than waiting for divine inspiration. Or providence.
