10 posts tagged “novel”

I'm done trying to start new projects only to have them die before I get them off the ground. I'm tired of telling myself I'm not going to write, because there isn't enough time to get started, because the idea dies long before I develop it or any of the other bullshit that I keep telling myself over the past few years. I keep deluding myself into thinking that I just need to focus on the next story, that next cool idea that will spark my brain and then I'll be off. But all I have to show for it is a folder full of half-baked ideas, notes and notebooks and a very real lack of anything to show for my time and effort.

So, I'm just going to finish what I began. I'm going to go back to the beginning, to my very first story and finish the second novel. Yeah, that's right, I -did- write a novel. Maybe it's good. I have no idea. I was much younger, much more callow and full of myself when I started. But at least I fucking did something back then, you know? My 16 year old self didn't sit around and debate and think and try to come up with reasons why the writing wasn't happening. He was just as addicted to video games. He worked just as many hours. And he still wrote. God, if that younger person could see himself now, he'd be irritated.

No more screwing around. I'm going to write and I'm going to finish this work I began years ago, and then I'll move onto the next work. Because I'm sick of not having anything to say when people ask "oh, what are you writing? How's the writing going?"

And then maybe I'll work on that second promise, the one that I feel in my bones; that I cannot allow this work to accumulate. I can't let it sit and languish in the folder on my computer, unseen, undigested. I don't care if anybody thinks it's good. I'm not craving validation or approval. It just needs to be read. Consumed. Released into the world.

Time to get to work. Although it occurs to me that I'll have to change the title since a book called "Twilight's Shadow" probably will not do nearly as well now as it would have five years ago. Hmm. Or maybe it would. Who knows. I'll figure that out later.

Also, incidentally,  if you've never heard of Pandora I would recommend it. I particularly enjoy how it tries to match up music based on my tastes, which has led to a few nice gems that I can then seek out via my Zune Marketplace and add them to my collection. It always pleases me when my digital content achieves a sort of synergy with itself.

So, the NaNoWriMo project was officially a bust. I got off to a great start, had a solid week of writing roughly 1000 words a day and I was well on my merry way... and then I just sort of hit a wall. I skipped a few days because of the convention, and then I just never picked up the project again and the enthusiasm for it died. I cannot help but blame part of this on the fact that Wrath of the Lich King had to come out this month, which completely sucked me under for a while (though I hope now that I've hit 80 with my first character, the overwhelming desire to log on and level every single free moment will taper off some.)

I'm really not sure why somebody decided to have this writing month in November. It seems inconvenient. All of the year's best games are usually released in November, college students are finishing up the last month of the semester and finals and essays are usually raining down on us in droves. And then there's all the holiday stuff that normal people have to deal with. Why not have the national novel month in, say, June? Nothing happens in June.

I'm not sure whether to post what I did manage to write; it was a pretty sizeable chunk of story (I think around 10,000 words or so) but it is -extremely- messy, and because I was trying to write quickly, without stopping, there's a great chance that the story totally sucks. Maybe if somebody really tries to convince me, I'll unearth it. We'll see.

So, at this point, I'm trying to put together some short stories to send off to that publisher I met at the con, since his deadline is coming up and I don't want to blow this opportunity. I've got two ideas for horror stories so far... here's hoping I can find the juice to polish them off.

As you may have seen from my twittering (I refuse to admit that "tweet" is the verb for such actions), my work on my NaNoWriMo project is now seriously behind, with a deficit of five days and growing. At this point, I'm debating whether to just see exactly how far I can get, considering how good it felt when I was sticking to a strict schedule, or pull out now before I get too stressed with a project that is meant to be solely beneficial. After all, it's not as if I don't have other things on my plate; the essay on Into the Wild is due tomorrow, which I was hoping to have finished yesterday during my day off, except for the irritating fact that the more time I have, the less motivated I am to do work. And then there's the short story that I need to write and submit to the rep I met at TusCon, and there's the work on trying to get December published, and...

Busy, busy, busy.

We'll see how it goes. The essay is my first priority, since the grade matters and the thing is due tomorrow. After stalling on it all night, I was able to make some decent progress on it today, though I'm concerned that it isn't as tight as it could be due to how much I loved the subject matter, which, as you may note, is a rarity; usually, I am universally negative about the texts I have to write about, such as the whole Faulkner thing. Not sure what to make of that.

Well, off to work, and then finishing that essay, and THEN meeting up with The Brauer to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King night, which is completely inconvenient for me. Seriously, Wrath, couldn't you come out next week? I have a paper due tomorrow and you're making it impossible to concentrate.

Thank God I cannot buy it until midnight at the very earliest, grr.

If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll know that I've been doing constant updates on the status of my NaNoWriMo project. But if you haven't seen that and you were wondering how it's going, here's a little update. So far, it's been great! I've written every day since the first of November, and I'm up to about 8971 words. My goal is about 2000 words a day, which has been a little tough to do, but I'm still plugging away. Most of all, I'm just happy that I've been able to be consistent with this. Committing to a project and not getting distracted is something that's really difficult for me. I think that forcing myself to not stall and just dedicate myself to one task will really help.

I will keep you updated, maybe even post some details about the story here soon! If you're interested in more up-to-date progress, keep an eye on my twitter account; I log each session's progress when I finish.

Here's to 50,000 words in 30 days!

Author Michael Crichton has passed away. This makes me very sad. Jurassic Park was the first adult novel I'd ever read, at the tender age of seven. I consider Crichton to be one of the cornerstones of my development as a reader and then, later on, as a writer.

Very sad news.

So, I just did my first writing session with this NaNoWriMo idea. So far, so good!

A few details: the working title for my story is "Reapers and Riders." It's based on a poem I wrote a few years ago. For the moment, I'm going to keep most of the details to myself, especially since it's still just starting to form in my head. But, assuming all goes well, I might start posting some things about the characters and the setting as I develop them. The way I look at it, if I do that, not only will it give me something to share with you, but it will also help me kick around new ideas and hopefully make things better.

Also, one other thing I'm going to be doing is ending each post about this story with a word count, so you can keep track of my progress (probably also going to do this on Twitter, now that I think about it.)

Current Word Count: 1730

That's sort of an annoying name to type in.

But, as most people know, November is the season for lazy writers to try to become dedicated ones and finish a 50,000 word novel in exactly one month. I skipped it last year, and the year before, but.... you know, I think I'm really going to give a shot this month. I've got a pretty good idea for a story and, well, maybe this is what I need to really get myself in gear and get back to the creative writing thing that my college education has worked so hard to smother.

Not sure if I'll post story bits as I go along, or just keep updates on my progress. We'll see how it goes.

Wish me luck! Actually, screw luck... there really isn't any luck in writing. Wish me inspiration and/or an abundance of free time and focus. That'd be better.

So, I realized I haven't working on my latest novel since May of 2007. That's not to say that I haven't been writing; I certainly have been working on various projects, but the saga of Ardryn and Katar had fallen dormant. I'm not sure what inspired me to work on it again, but I'm not going to let it rot. I really want to finish this story and then, God forbid, see about getting in published.

I've got a new routine, too. Instead of trying to write after I get home from work and I'm fried from a long day and in the mood only to relax, I'm trying to wake up an hour earlier in the morning and just write as much as I can in that hour. I started it today and it turned out really well; I didn't feel the urge to procrastinate, since I had such a limited amount of time before I have to get ready for work.

We'll see how it goes.

Oh, yeah, hi again. If you're reading this, I'm somewhat surprised, since I think this is my longest hiatus ever.

-Draxle

So, I was lying in bed this morning, not ready to pry myself from my pillow, but more or less fully awake. These are often my contemplative periods, where I think about stories, or philosophy, or whatever else happens to catch my fancy. This particular morning, I was thinking about the new novel that I hinted at yesterday (The working title, by the way, is "Dragons of Winter," for reasons I have yet to determine). I was trying to think about why I'm having such a roadblock getting this story going; I mean, I have the world I want to write in, I have three excellent characters so far, and I have the plot hook. Why has it been so hard to write the first chapter?

And then it hit mean, with the alacrity of a bolt of lightning, and the thundering "duh" of a thousand sarcastic readers: "You cannot make a traditional travel-fantasy epic with a dragon character because dragons can fucking fly, and thus cruise right on over to the end of the journey."

See, that was going to be my hook: my main character is a dragon. Dragons have been all over the place in fantasy literature, and while I'm sure there are fantasy books out there with this same approach, I haven't read any of them, so for me, this idea is completely new and original.

I don't know why it took so long for me to have this important revelation. I mean, it should be obvious and in so many ways, it is, but I just never bothered to stop and think about it. Imagine if Frodo was a dragon in Lord of the Rings (Goddamn, that would be awesome)... it's just one nonstop draconic flight from here to Mt. Doom. Buzz the mountain, launch that little golden sucker, and be home in one chapter. Although, you'd probably have to have some aerial dogfights with the Nazgul.... which would also be totally awesome. But it wouldn't be Lord of the Rings. There's no journey, no epic quest across bleak, broken wastelands and festering swamps.

So, now I need to rethink the story and come up with a way to do a fantasy epic without having the epic quest and journey. I'm sure I'll come up with something; either, a plausible, non-retarded reason for why she can't just fly to the end of the story, or a story that does not involve travel all over the place.

We'll see what happens.

-Draxle

See, I'm back. Sort of surprising, actually; I really didn't think I'd manage to do another update before, say, July. But here I am! If you're wondering as to the nascent reason for my sudden surge of productivity, well, I shall tell you, though the reasons are far less altruistic than you might be comfortable with.

I am in the process of trying to write a book. A second book, to be exact. And for a good long while, I've been wracked with something I call "white space terror," which happens whenever I start a new writing project, or think about starting a new writing project, and then imagine actually starting the project and having all of that white space to fill, and suddenly I just don't know what to say. Writing always gets easier for me as I work at it, because eventually, I have so much text behind me that it becomes a driving force to keep adding to it, just to see the word count grow. It's crazy. I love thinking about new projects and fantastic ideas, but actually starting them? It practically kills me.

That's why I'm here now. This new book has been a very slow creature in coming... and while I've written down almost seven pages of notes (many thanks to my girlfriend and collaborator, Julia, for her wonderful aid in this task,) there is something preventing me from getting beyond the silly little prologue that I've written so far. I don't know how to start the book, I don't know who to start it with... and every time I sit down to write, I either get distracted or wander aimlessly, wasting my time. Which, I suppose you could argue, is why I'm writing a blog entry instead of focusing on the novel, but if I may direct your attention to the title of this entry, you shall see the method I am employing.

I've heard that some writers treat writing just like exercise, and that they can't just "jump in" to their works, at least not before getting the mental muscles warmed up and limber. So that's what I'm trying to do... writing this entry just for the sake of writing something in the hope that, by tapping into the creative spigot gently, I will work up the momentum and drive that can carry me from one silly blog post into my actual, substantive creative works. At least, that's what I'm hoping.

Hopefully, that'll do. I'm going to go give it the old college try now, and see what happens. You'll probably hear about my success or failure in this task, if I indeed manage to return to this blog before, say, July.

I need to read more books, I've decided. You can never have enough books and it is unfortunate that my enjoyment of video games has drained away time that could have been spent with books, both good and bad. Something to think about.

-Draxle