Writing is certainly a challenge, even for someone who typically has diarrhea (sp?) of the mouth like I do. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it immensely. Especially when I get on a roll and realize I’ve written a whole bunch, it is almost exciting. There is a certain pleasure from seeing a word counter tick up as you clack away, but in my current environment no such counter exists so I just kind of wing it. I try and hit 300 words in a blog post, but if you’ve read any of my stuff you will see I don’t always hit it. Sometimes, for sure.

Once I get the porch to the point where I don’t have to climb on the roof multiple times a day, I am going to jump back into the London Writers Salon and work on my novel a little. I think the time I was able to participate I got in like 700 words or something, but was able to flesh out a part of the story I wasn’t super happy with so there is postiivity in that. When I started writing that book there were a bunch of days where I would hit 3-4k words in a sitting, but that is a difficult goal to acheive. Even like, copying stuff out of a book or something would be hard to physically type that much. My wrists are getting tired even just typing this (and the other post I typed today because I missed yesterday).

At the end of Piers Anthony’s On a Pale Horse (AMAZING book if you haven’t read it), he leaves a fairly extensive authors note in which he sort of outlines his writing process. He writes the first draft with pencil on paper, then types up the second draft, then again types up the third draft. So every novel he has written has three copies of it, which I would imagine makes you very familiar with your own work and very able to spot issues in it. That was always my problem and why I am using a “writing system” now; I get lost in my own story.

For NaNoWriMo a few years ago I started a novel. It was basically about a man who was left behind on earth after participating in a long-term cryogenic study, and his life after waking up. I got probably 15k words into it, not a small feat, but would just end up getting lost in the story. I think that for me to be good at this, or even marginally competent, I have to have an outline or something to work from. I can fairly easily flesh out most of the story, at least enough so that I can get a good start at it and expand on the outline, and the story, as I progress.

That is what I’ve done with this current book. I am working my way through the first act in the 27 Chapter Formula, though strictly sticking to the formula has proven difficult so far. They want you to hit specific parts in the plot line at specific times, and my story just doesn’t flow like that so far. If I hadn’t gotten so far already I would probably try and convert to just writing, but too late for that I guess. I’m going to try my best to finish this up and do something with it, even if it is just like publish it to SmashWords or Amazon or whatever. Even if no one reads it, at least I will have finished something.

  • I am writing this on a terminal and don’t have spell check. Sue me.