Back to Ki’s POV, and him pulling Aleksa out of a situation he previously got her into.
I did 3588 words on Lesson Four of HTRYN today, and was pretty happy to get the 287 I managed on Dreaming the Dead.
I’m not exactly enthralled by what I got. But I’m dead tired, and I got something. I’ll leave it at that.
Hope your fiction was more fun.
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I love writing. Why is this so hard? Everyone I know says to me “You should write!” And I agree. I do write. But sometimes I have days that I feel like my brain is silly putty. Only not as useful. Could only wring out about 100, very hard-fought words tonight. I just can’t seem to get the beginning right. Either I feel like I’m moving too fast, trying to throw too much at the reader, or I’m being too leisurely. There is so much backstory to deal with. Do I throw it all in at the beginning. Do the David Copperfield “crap”, or do I spoon-feed it throughout the story. An important part of my main character’s motivation is her own need for approval, her emerging from being a rebellious and angry young woman, and her maturing into a caring and responsible young housewife. Hmmm, maybe I have not explored her character as thoroughly as I thought. Maybe I don’t need to make the reader aware of her youthful anger. Maybe that isn’t really important. I think I’ll take some time to go back to her personal dossier and get her motivation a little clearer in my mind. If I don’t have to deal with her past history of anger, maybe the flashback thing with smooth out. Just a frustrating day all in all.
Still stuck in transition… I think maybe 250 words. The whole mood of the scene is wrong (too introspective, too sad…) I can’t seem to get back into the narrator’s voice I’d been using/can’t seem to get all that interested in this section of the story. I’ll have to try again tomorrow.
Ok since I have never written before having a writer’s block for a month sucked major ass. I don’t know why I lost the voice in my head, but I did…is it the holidays coming, was it the distractions from halloween, 24th anniversary or the U2 concert in Vegas. I don’t know, at least Bono tried to light a fire under my ass with his injection of ISS in the concert. I did get my voice back today and got 450 words. I’m at CH8 with 29K now, I also added outline adjustments to several chapters today. Back on the pony!
About 1700 words yesterday for Nano. I actually had an easier time with those words in comparison with the last couple days. And I was worried Week Two would kill me! Hopefully today I get the same results. It seems I am procrastinating yet again.
270 words on the novel and 300+ on my someday project that I take notes on. I tried a new spot to write at because my favorite coffee house isn’t open as late as the daughter’s rehearsals. The new spot was terribly noisy: loud music and loud employees. I was the only customer. So, I will go back to the library and take my coffee with me!!!
I don’t like what I am writing at the moment, but I am allowing myself “to write the crap” and I will deal with it at a later date!
329 last night. I wasn’t going to write anything. I still hadn’t worked out how I want the hatching scene to play out, but in the last half hour or so before bed I forced myself to plop down and start working. I’m glad I did. I got a foot into the scene and can see where I want it to go now, what the attitudes of the characters are toward each other and what’s going on. I’m going to have to go back and figure out where the dog is, though. He was with the boys in the car moments ago, extremely agitated by the proximity of the suspicious smelling rock, but I don’t want him to meet the fledgling dragon until later. He may end up being confined to the basement for all the racket he’s stirring up.
1664 last night – Monday – Just pushing on here, not really feeling captivated by my own words as I probably should at this point. I’ve been at this story a long time. Maybe too long? How do you know when to kiss it and go to something else? It’s llike an errant child, you love it, you’ve put a lot of work into it, and don’t want to give up on it. Maybe I’m just having a bad day.
My suggestion is: Just write through it. Get to the end. Then put it away for awhile and come back to it later with fresh eyes and fresh ideas.
YMMV.
Maybe ask yourself what it was that made you excited in the first place? Have you strayed too far from the planned plot (if you have one)? Can you twist the current scene? Or maybe try skipping ahead to a completely different scene, one you really really wanted to write (candybar).
Also, there is Holly’s “Butn it, Bury it, Let it Live”:
https://hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/burnit.html
3,007 words. And… now I have no idea what comes next.
546 words.
The Princess tries to deal with her grief over watching her father ridiculed and killed on TV while her bodyguards fight over what to do next. One bodyguard says his first loyalty and duty is to his family while The Bodyguard says their first loyalty should be to the Crown and they have a job to do. The other bodyguard ridicules The Princess for being a bimbette and unworthy of their loyalty and The Bodyguard roughs him up. And then tells him to get the hell out. Then, in an effort to be supportive, he goes to the crying Princess and asks if she wants some beef jerky. Because… you know… it’s pretty good.
I don’t think I spent enough time exploring the Princesses feelings. Of course, she’s horrified to watch her father die but she didn’t really like him and she feels guilty about that. Hearing that her elder brother was also killed, she knows that this opens up her claim on the throne, and she feels kinda guilty about thinking about herself at a time like this. And she’s also scared because she doesn’t know if she can do the job or whether she’ll even be allowed to survive more than another few hours. What I wrote concentrated on the bodyguards too much. I’ll probably re-visit and expand this scene before going on.
613 words. More than expected. I have now passed the 40K mark. That’s a lot of words. I am going to have a lot of revising to do, eventually, because I have a lot more story to tell. A lot more!
Guess I’d rather have too big a story to tell than having to scramble around, trying to pad it. Sometimes I get exhausted just thinking about the journey ahead of me! Feel like Frodo, just about to leave the outskirts of the Shire:-)
400 that I’m not counting because I was feverish when I wrote them and they make no sense. I came in to work but I’m debating going home again – and getting a dr’s note.
A happy writing night! Made possible by characters that do and say what they’re supposed to and a fairly detailed outline of the scenes I planned to write.
3,881 words and I’m almost halfway done with the 50k sprint !
D&D: 534
OFL: 1032
RFW: 1026
Work on RFW dragged on a bit, but I think that might be because I tackled it last and was feeling tired by then!
This and the next scene for D&D, then three shorter ones to finish…
1,139 words.
Tough start, because I had a technical problem with POV and referents. I have two POV characters with the same given name, though everyone thinks the king is called Arral (book 1), and he’s only referred to as Rennor in his own POV. I had a bit of a panic about how to refer to his as yet unknown bastard son. but once that was solved, with help, it flowed much easier. I also went back a bit to insert an unoutlined scene a little earlier in the story.
Baron Rennor Zhaer makes his surreptitious entrance into the ballroom, and gets his first glimpse of the king he knows is his father. Then he starts stalking the room, looking for the king’s (official) children so he can ask one of them to formally present him to the king–knowing the king will recognise his name and realise his identity.
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