1,079 words today, but I decided to throw out the last 487, so it balances out to about 500. The really cool thing was that I wrote all this in the two separate hours I had between classes. I’ve always thought that I should only write if I have a large amount of time set aside in which I could just focus on it. This shows me that I can jump right into it and do fairly well!
I need to adjust my goals…basically, this weekly goal thing just doesn’t work for me. I need a daily goal. 500 words sounds as good as any. I’ll try it again.
But there are so many other things I should be doing that I never do…the story of my life…at least I’m only taking 15 credits this semester.
Aneeka is reviewing my story right now. It will be interesting to hear what she has to say about it. I know she can be pretty thorough, but all I wanted was an initial reaction, so I told her just to read it casually and tell me what she thinks. She told me that sometimes, if she’s reading a book that has bad characterization or other elements, she’ll chuck the book across the room. I told her not to throw her computer across the room!
Hopefully it won’t be that bad. However, I still haven’t really figured out the main character’s character. That’s probably for the best, though, because I won’t be falling back to stereotypes (like I am with some of the other characters). It’s very easy to write a character when you have an archetype in mind. It’s a lot harder when the character’s personality and life experiences just don’t match your own. I’ve got some figuring out to do, but I won’t let that stop me from progressing forward.
Something happened the other day that worried me about how the story is progressing. I was hanging out with my sister, and her boyfriend asked me to tell him about the story I’m writing. A few months ago, I’d be dying to tell people about the story, and I’d go into great detail of the history of the story’s universe, how everything is set up, what ideas I’ve got for it, etc. Usually, it would bore people to death, so I’ve gotten used to just not telling them about it. This time, when he was actually asking me to tell him all about it, I told him but it just didn’t seem as exciting or compelling as it did before. Am I losing my belief in this story? Or is it just that I’ve got so many other things on my mind that this is getting pushed down the ladder?
Either way, I think the solution is to write more often, and just be immersed in the world that this is taking place. You see, when I write, my writing surprises me. I’ll find myself describing things about the world that I hadn’t thought up at all, but it will make perfect sense and fit in fairly well. It’s pretty cool
So, the new goal is: write every day, at least 500 words.
Part of it could be that you just haven’t figured out the right pitch for your story. (pitch – very concise summary that gets people [especially editors and agents] interested in your story) You know that the long version sounds boring, so you try to cut it down, but it just doesn’t have the same gusto. I wouldn’t worry about not having the excitement in your pitch until you’re trying to sell the book. By then, you’ll have figured out what exactly this book is about, and you should be able to condense that into a one-minute pitch. (at least, that’s what I hear from my published author friends).
Yeah, I definitely don’t have a pitch–probably because I don’t know at this point how it’s going to end. But we’ll see. I just hope I have the excitement to keep going on this. Probably the writing group and this blog will do a lot to motivate me to finish this.