An elephant (IS or WAS) standing on my chest!

The sample chapter (is or has been) started.

Never has a blinking cursor seemed so intimidating. Normally, my writing spans 800 to 1,000 words – tops – and whenever it appears somewhere it exists for a day to a month. I usually bang out these pieces in a day and then revisit them a few days later to rewrite them. But writing a book…

So long. So permanent.

Yikes!

I’m a no-stress kind of guy, but that blasted blank-page cursor on Thursday gave me the ol-elephant-on-the-chest-feeling. Primarily, the elephant existed because of tense. I prefer to write in the present tense and often when I write in the past tense I’ll find myself switching back to the present. I usually frame a story on a single scene or a narrative and if I need to jump back to get some info I throw in a paragraph or two of past tense background. But maintaining the present tense in a book length narrative (seems or seemed or will seem) somewhat daunting.

I scared off the elephant, for now, with some pre-writing. By breaking down the Bangladesh chapter into workable parts, I feel much more comfortable. My plan is to frame each chapter on a specific narrative in the present tense. For Bangladesh this will be on my experience undercover as an underwear buyer. The rest of the chapter will be in the past tense, which will give me the chance for more reflection. In all, the Bangladesh chapter should be about 50% present and 50% past.

I suspect the next elephant will be a result of the question: Can the tense switching be done without confusing the reader?

But at a certain point in time no matter how many darned elephants are coming at you, you just gotta start writing.

I (am or did).