Yeah, that’s right. Somewhere on the order of 4,000 words in the last 48 hours…
Blegh.
I wish I were writing more in The Lost Colony. It seems that for every day I write 1,000+ words in that story, three days pass with me doing something else. I’m writing, usually–but in other stories. And when I do come back to that story, it’s hard to pick it back up. I need to finish it…just finish it…
In fact, I think I’ll set a new goal to help with that: write at least SOMETHING in The Lost Colony each day.
In the meantime, I’ve made good progress on The Wormhole Paradigm, that story I’m writing for English 318. It’s up to about 5,800 words now, from 2,000 before the weekend. Adding on the 1,000 words I wrote in The Lost Colony last night, and the final edits to Decision LZ150207 yesterday…yeah, that’s a lot. Blegh.
I spent a lot of time on The Wormhole Paradigm today, and I think I know how to fix what hasn’t been working. Basically, everyone has been saying that the characters aren’t strong enough. Honestly, my motivation for the story isn’t the characters, it’s the ideas and the setting behind all that. But, I guess I need to have good characters too. Phoiee.
Well, here was my idea: make sure that each of the major characters has a weakness and a strength. The way the strengths and weaknesses play off of each other will develop the deeper parts of their characters.
I’ve already done it, to a certain degree, with The Lost Colony. Ian has a strong sense of right and wrong and is a natural leader, but he lacks the self confidence to do much more than stay in the background. Leila is very independent, strong, and adventurous, but she’s also very naive. Saeed is extremely loyal towards his friends, but sometimes he relies too much on blind faith. Aaron is a mechanical genius, but he’s also very xenophobic. David wants to protect his people, but he’s also ambitious and resorts to violence too quickly. Elijah is very wise and learned, but…well, maybe I need to come up with a weakness for him.
Now that I’ve come up with this idea, it means I’ll have to rethink the characters in The Wormhole Paradigm and probably rewrite what I’ve got already, but whatever. That can wait for the rewrite(s). And if the guys in 318 have a problem with that, they can bite me. Rehashing an unfinished draft over and over will not help this story progress.
Speaking of which, I think I have a solution to one of the problems I’ve had with the 318 group: I’ll just be sure to write ahead of what I’m actually submitting to the writing group. That way, I think I’ll have less of an urge to just rewrite everything that the writing group critiques, since my mind will be a couple of thousand words ahead.
Oh, and one last thing. I submitted Decision LZ150207 to the Writers of the Future contest yesterday! Yay! Now we’ll wait and see what happens. I’m not really expecting to win, but at least a rejection slip will give me license to submit it elsewhere. And I do think that it can get published eventually. That’s the goal.
In the meantime, life is overtaking me. Blehg!
