Too much of a good thing

I don’t like chocolate. I don’t like chocolate flavored ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies. Anyone one I mention that to here in the US look at me as if I’m a mutant…A woman who doesn’t like chocolate?! Well it wasn’t always like that, but you can have too much of a good thing.

When I was a kid, I loved chocolate; I craved chocolate. The thing is, I hardly ever got chocolate. Not that it wasn’t available on the St. Kitts, it was just too expensive. I have fond memories of when my older sister was pregnant and had chocolate cravings. Every now and then she would send me to the shop to buy that creamy Cadbury milk chocolate bar, the kind with the fruit and nuts in it. I looked forward to those times knowing if I didn’t saunter too long or piss her off I’d be rewarded with a square of the chocolate. I savored that tiny square of chocolate. I loved chocolate then.

All that changed when I took my first vacation. It was in Puerto Rico. I discovered that not only was chocolate readily available, it was cheap. The first week I bought a huge bag of Hershey’s kisses. I ate and ate and ate, enjoying every one of those little chocolate kisses. I finished the bag in about two hours. Then came the belly ache, the nausea, the vomiting. After that I could not look at another chocolate. In fact, it took me seven years before I could taste another chocolate without getting upset. I am now able to eat a little chocolate occasional, preferably Swiss chocolate, but to this day, I cannot eat Hershey’s chocolate, especially Hershey’s kisses, even though that incident occurred 21 years ago. You can have too much of a good thing.

Sometimes that happens in writing. I have a habit, don’t know whether it’s bad or not, of writing chapter by chapter sequentially, and reading from the beginning of the manuscript before adding another chapter. It works fine, sometimes. Unfortunately, by the time I get to the later chapters I’m so sick of reading the earlier chapters, I want to barf.

A few WIPs ago, I got so sick of the manuscript I was working on I ditched it. A few months later while browsing my computer I stumbled across it, thought that it was interesting and resumed work on it. I got to chapter 20 and again found myself unable to go on. Initially, I thought it was because I didn’t have a written outline (I write by the seat of my pants). I eventually ditched it and began working on my current WIP. This time, I wrote my outlines, did character sketches, even did chapter by chapter outline. I used the same approach writing sequentially and reading back from the beginning or at least a few prior chapters before writing a new chapter. I got to chapter fourteen, and couldn’t go on, despite my well planned out plot. Yes like the chocolate, I got tired of reading the entire manuscript over and over again and constantly writing it in my head to the point of distraction.

So what did I do? I took a break for a few days. I wrote the outline for a new manuscript from ideas that were floating around in my head. I revisited some earlier abandoned or postponed manuscripts and found them interesting enough to desire to continue working on them. I did other day job related stuff, hung out with facebook friends, did some book promotion. When I returned to my WIP, I was seeing it with new eyes, and yes, I was ready to work on it again.

So how do you deal with reading your WIP over and over again without getting tired enough to feed it to the shredder?