Kira Disapproves

I haven’t updated this in a while, and I just got a bit of writing done. I’m working on another project for a fellowship appliation that is going much less well (there’s my good English!), so I’ve been neglecting this project. Maybe I’ll get a few more words in on writing date tomorrow, but I still have Providence Hill revisions to finish. We’ll see….

Still, almost half-way is better than nothing! (Although not better than the full first draft I wanted to have before Spring Break.)

I think having Mo here, plus the sunny day finally fixed my bad writing week. Since last evening:

…me. I just cannot get anything done on this novel. The characters are just wandering around a creek bed, currently, waiting for something more interesting to do. Really, they’re wading in a creek. I even wrote about them putting on some nice, sensible boots.

Anyways, I’m in the middle of a pretty funny bread disaster with round two of the Amish White Bread. Expect a post as soon as the full compliment of “after” pictures is available. But I had a pretty productive (if creek-focused) writing session with Theresa tonight, and I wanted to put up the word counter again to keep myself honest. The goal is 50,000.

If anyone knows how to make this easier, be sure to speak up!

I haven’t been true to this little thing in a while….

But there it is.

It’s been slower progress than I thought it would be, but sticking with it is proving to me that “just writing” works. At around 7,000 words, I was finally able to see a lot of what was wrong with my concept. At 8,500 or so, I hit on a scene I thought might be cool, but mostly conceived of as filler to get from point A to B. By 10,000 I knew that particular scene was kind of the point all along, and I’m still writing from it.

As I told Pam, one of the things I realized is that I love books that start with the whole “If I’d only known then what I know now”-type hook and then part of the book is the mystery of knowing what got the character to that point. I’m always starting stories that way, and I love writing them for a week or so because I’m just as excited about the mystery of it all coming in to focus as if I were reading it. Writing what I’m working on now has made me realize that those kinds of openings have to be EARNED. Preferably by the entire novel that comes after them. So now I’m writing towards that point where I can step back and pull a thread from the story and finally let my character say “If only…” and I’ll really know what they mean.

If I’d only known then & etc…

Okay, that’s my word counter for my novel. I got it from www.writertopia.com.

And, by the way, at least 6,000 of those words make no sense.