Freewriting

I've been feeling that my writing thus far in my novel is inadequate. The fear of this inadequacy has become the main block to my writing lately. The writing is not up to my standards, so whenever I start a new section I freeze up in fear that the writing I am doing is bad. And of course it is bad because writer's block is, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've decided to incorporate freewriting into my daily routine in order to try to get past this writer's block. I really hope it works.

Borders has an online bookclub interview with Michael Chabon to discuss his new book The Yiddish Policemen's Union and some of his comments on the writing itself were very helpful. Most especially helpful to me was his discussion of writing the whole first draft (600 pages!) in the first person past tense and then realizing it was wrong for his story. He started over and wrote the published version in third person present tense. It's relieving to hear that successful authors have these blips as well. For me it was also helpful because I've been thinking lately that my narrator's voice isn't working for the novel. It's currently third person past tense, but I think I need to change it to third person present tense. Before I rewrite everything I've already written, I think I'll use the freewriting to test sections of it to see if this change will help my story.