It’s late at night, but I just got finished writing and I wanted to blog in about it. It went fairly well. I introduced a new character (Leila) and tried to develop her a little bit, show the different sides of her personality and how she reacts to trials and difficulties. I hope that I got started off on the right note and that she’s an interesting character to read about. I probably didn’t do all that good with the main male character (I’ve changed his name to Ian) and should probably revise that before I submit it for the Quark writing group. It can be challenging to make your characters interesting in those first few pages when you introduce them. You’ve got to be efficient.
I’ve decided to modify my goals a little bit. I’m going to shoot for 4,000 words a week instead of 500 a day. That way, if I miss a day or two, I’m still good.
For me personally, I don’t think that writing is the kind of thing that lends itself to doing a little bit every day (which is why I decided never to be a full time writer). I do much better when I write sporadically in big chunks, rather than consistently spitting out very small pieces every day.
I am a little bit worried that I’m too wordy in my writing, but I’m not going to worry too much about editing and rewrites until I actually finish the whole thing. I’ve got to allow myself to suck if I’m ever going to be any good. I’m optimistic about all this.
I’m wondering, though, if I should try to think out the entire story in my head, including the ending, before I go much further. I tried that a couple of times with some of the other stories that I wrote, but things always changed so much midway that it didn’t really work. On the other hand, if I have at least the skeleton of a complete story in my mind, I might believe in it more as I write it. That would provide motivation and keep me from wondering if I’m just making a fool of myself as I write this.
And, one quick note, in case you’re getting sick of reading nothing but my whining about writing, I do plan on doing some useful things on this blog, such as reviewing some podcasts, talking about Quark, and doing some other things. It’s not just going to always be me saying “well, this is how my story is going but I don’t want to actually post it on the internet since I may want to sell it someday.”
I hope that you enjoy my stream-of-conscious ramblings anyways. That’s what blogging is about–random ramblings on interesting subjects. At least I’ll try to keep it short!
Your writing goal sounds good. I should set myself a more stringent goal, though I do think I still need a daily one. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do any writing. Procrastination and all that. 😉 To each his own.
And I agree with you on not worrying about the editing. I found that if I submitted chapters of a novel to Quark before I had finished the novel, I would just endlessly go back and rework those beginning chapters and never finish. Wordiness is something easy to change once you get the entire story down. Then when you know what you’re saying, you can say it more concisely. 🙂
As for whether or not to sketch out your plan, I’ve heard many different strategies that work for different people. Some like discovering along with their characters what’s going to happen. Others like a detailed outline. I’ve also heard a strategy where you only come up with the middle climax and the ending just so you have an idea of what’s going to happen, but you can still discover as you go along. I’m more along the last one. I don’t like to formalize what’s going to happen, but I do like to have an idea of what will happen. Either way, figure out what works for you.
And I haven’t gotten tired of your blog yet. I haven’t considered it whining, yet. 🙂
Just checking out your blog for the first time. Looks awesome! Going along with what Reigheena said, I think the idea behind the daily goals is to keep you writing on those days that you just want to give up hope and abandon the craft. The fear is if you stop writing for a day, then you’ll stop for another…and another…and next thing you know it’s six months later and you haven’t touched the keyboard.
But I’m also one of those who sits and writes in large chunks.