On a Roll!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

It seems like just yesterday that I started working on this first novel writing experience. I guess I'm still riding that "writer's high" that I've read about, but now, about 3 months after the idea for this book came to me, I'm still having a blast!

Looking at my ever-growing collection of files for the book, the earliest one that I have found dated to August 7, 2008. That sounds about right. We were up north visiting family when the idea for this novel came to me, so I guess I'll count that as my start date - give or take a day or two in either direction.

As of what I have written yesterday here's some stats on how the book is progressing:

Number of Pages (1.5x spacing).....108
Total Words for Story..................30,886
Minimum Word Count Goal…….80,000

Total Words Broken Up:
Written Chapters..................10.757
Started Chapters....................8,693
Outlined Chapters................11,436

Yesterday I wrote a scene that I find pretty funny. It's been playing in my head since the very beginning, but for some reason I never got around to typing it up during my writing times. It's a car ride scene that pokes fun at how evil irony and fate can be at times. It's not perfect, but no rough draft is. I'll be able to fine tune it later on when I'm editing the whole thing. I have the main point that I wanted to get across done, but I need some additional descriptions to set the scene. Not a lot more, but it just needs something - oh well that's what the second draft is for.

I've been reading a lot of writing websites. Reading articles by authors on their writing processes and various tips and tricks on how to get the story from your head and onto paper, or the word document in my case.

Hi, I'm Willow... and I'm a techy geek, but I have no plans to change so... :P

Speaking of techy geek, I'm really looking forward to getting my new iPod from the Haunted Bloggy Carnival Contest I had entered. The sponsor said she bought it today and it should arrive in the next few days. The main reason I'm looking forward to getting it is because I've recently started using music as a driving influence on some of my scenes and characters. I have a special MySpace Music profile set up with my inspirational songs and I play them when I'm about to write about a certain character or situation. Surprisingly I have all of the songs in my personal collection already, they're just not all on the computer yet and it was really fast and easy to make the play list. With an MP3 player I'll be able to carry the songs with me wherever I go to help me subconsciously continue working on chapters.

I've been trying to put together a play list of songs that Casey, my main character, would listen to. Since I'm writing from her point-of-view I think this will help me "get into character" when I'm typing. Although this means that I'll have to make up a play list for a second character as well. At one point, at the end of the story, I think I'm going to change perspectives for a chapter or two.

I've come to realize that a lot of the exciting stuff at the end of the story happens when Casey isn't around. I've went back and forth on how to deal with this. I've considered having a character tell her what happened, but then the reader would wonder if that character is telling her everything, or if they even remember it all clearly. Everything happens pretty fast at the end and it would be understandable, given what happens, for this character to not remember things correctly. If I switch to his perspective for a couple chapters I think it will really let the reader see what a good guy he actually is. There's certain scenes that he's the only character present that I'm not sure if he'd tell Casey about them. Not that he'd be hiding stuff from her, but – on their own – these scenes don't seem very important. They only have major importance when you see them in the grand scheme of things.

The regular chapters would end in his perspective and he utters the final sentence that left me in tears when I wrote it. Then the epilogue would be written in Casey's perspective, so the readers leaves the story knowing her take on everything as well.

There's really only one part of the ending that I haven't decided on – how to write the ending of my main villain. I know what happens to them, but I don't know what Casey and the reader should learn about it. I like what I have in my outline right now, but there's that little voice in the back of my head wondering if maybe it would be better to…

But anyway, this whole blogging experience is pretty cool. Even if no one else reads it but me, just typing everything up like this is really freeing. Sometimes just typing the problems I'm having with a scene seems to make the whole situation so much clearer. I know I've worked through several bouts of writer's block just by blogging about it, whether the blog entry was marked public or not. What? There are times that I type too much plot information in a would-be blog entry. Since this is a public blog, if by some miracle, this would get published someday, I'd like to keep some things a secret. (Yeah, I've done the research on how likely it is to get published… *sigh* oh well, even if I just write this for me and a few friends it'll be worth it to me. Oh and to appease the writing gremlin, mustn't forget him…)

So for anyone who actually reads this, thanks for lending me an ear… or I guess it'd be an eyeball in this instance… you are reading this after all…

Oh well, back to writing! Talk 2-ya Later…

~Willow