The house has been blessedly quiet for the past few days, since my parents took my siblings on a fishing trip to B.C. I was invited along, but considering that I've been sick the past week, I'm terrified/grossed out by fish and I've been looking forward to a girls only party ever since I found out they were going... I declined.
There's another reason, too. Remember NaNoWriMo? I mentioned it in the last post? One month of crazy writing in November? Well, there are summer sessions. Camp NaNoWriMo they are called. I've only done the November NaNo before, but I'm trying to switch over to summer because I don't like how NaNoWriMo interferes with Christmas preparations. (I like to start getting ready in October.)
I also have a novella to write that I want to get finished as fast as possible. (At least, it's supposed to be a novella. It's stretching out pretty long in outlining.) I'm not going to bore anyone who doesn't care with details, but since I know some people will actually be interested in a few facts, I just want to give a quick overview.
This novella is a prequel to my six-year-WIP with the working title Taken. I came up with the idea for Taken when I was nine, so let's say it has grown a lot. It's taken a gigantic leap in the last few months, though, when I cut out major plot threads and reworked everything I'd planned about the plot.
I don't know if you understand this, but making changes that big on a six-year project is disorienting. To deal with that and really flesh out what the heck is going on in this story, I'm writing a prequel with the previous generation. Currently, I'm calling that Illuminate.
And boy am I glad I'm doing this. Everything I thought I knew had happened a mere twenty years before the story was a lie. I'm looking forward to a very fun filled, mind-numbing month. I probably won't check in again before August.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 June 2013
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Reflection on NaNoWriMo 2012
Hello, everyone! As I sit here under my brother's bed to protect him while he tries to go to sleep, I decided to look back at the last work I did on my sort of WIP. (I haven't written in it since last October... I think) and compare it with my NaNoWriMo of 2012, the one no one is allowed to read.
I have affectionately nicknamed this unseen draft The Set Animal, a reference you will understand only if you have read The Kane Chronicles. (For those of you who haven't, this is a monster from Egyptian mythology that is gigantic, disgusting and generally monstrous.) I decided last year that the only real way for me to really experience thirty days of literary abandon is to ensure that I am the only person who will ever read it.
Looking over both my half-WIP and The Set Animal, I made an astonishing discovery.
The Set Animal may not be gorgeous, but it's fun.
My WIP, however, the thing I worked on for years, is dry as an oven after it was on Auto-Clean.
There is a very simple reason for this. It wasn't that the plot was mortally flawed, though it was. The Set Animal was worse in that regard, however. It was the simple fact that I wrung all the life out of it. Every time I sat down to write, I sweat and bled and stared at the page and got a few sentences out of it. Sentences that I wrote and rewrote until they were 'perfect'.
Now if I sweat that much picking the BEST word for every. single. word. How are my readers going to feel? Like they want to hit themselves in the head with a hammer until the pain goes away is my best guess. That's how I felt, reading it over. It was like the kind of poorly written classic that evil teachers make children read for poor behavior. The scene structure was okay, it was just painstaking to read.
So, I don't know if any of this made any sense. I may well read this in the morning and wonder what I was talking about. But I just want to say to anyone who reads this and has any kind of interest in writing: Don't sweat it. Learn everything you can about how to write well, but when the time comes to sit down and write it, have fun. Worry about making it look good as the last step. The first draft is for falling in love with the story and fleshing out the idea. Do that. Be happy.
The End.
I have affectionately nicknamed this unseen draft The Set Animal, a reference you will understand only if you have read The Kane Chronicles. (For those of you who haven't, this is a monster from Egyptian mythology that is gigantic, disgusting and generally monstrous.) I decided last year that the only real way for me to really experience thirty days of literary abandon is to ensure that I am the only person who will ever read it.
Looking over both my half-WIP and The Set Animal, I made an astonishing discovery.
The Set Animal may not be gorgeous, but it's fun.
My WIP, however, the thing I worked on for years, is dry as an oven after it was on Auto-Clean.
There is a very simple reason for this. It wasn't that the plot was mortally flawed, though it was. The Set Animal was worse in that regard, however. It was the simple fact that I wrung all the life out of it. Every time I sat down to write, I sweat and bled and stared at the page and got a few sentences out of it. Sentences that I wrote and rewrote until they were 'perfect'.
Now if I sweat that much picking the BEST word for every. single. word. How are my readers going to feel? Like they want to hit themselves in the head with a hammer until the pain goes away is my best guess. That's how I felt, reading it over. It was like the kind of poorly written classic that evil teachers make children read for poor behavior. The scene structure was okay, it was just painstaking to read.
So, I don't know if any of this made any sense. I may well read this in the morning and wonder what I was talking about. But I just want to say to anyone who reads this and has any kind of interest in writing: Don't sweat it. Learn everything you can about how to write well, but when the time comes to sit down and write it, have fun. Worry about making it look good as the last step. The first draft is for falling in love with the story and fleshing out the idea. Do that. Be happy.
The End.
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