She Took Over

That moment is great.  That moment where one of your character takes control, it amazed me today.  It happened at around 20,000 words.  She wanted to do it, I had to let her and what transpired was perfect.  It moved the plot opened up another world of possibilities for the story and made it organic.  This is my first novel, and if this happens quite often I can see myself doing this forever. It was exhilarating and very satisfying.

I just calculated my time frame for finishing the first draft.  I averaged about 5000 words every 6 days.  I can probably speed that up, but I've been writing short stories and flash fiction on the side so that slows me down a bit. I'm okay with that. I feel doing the shorts has helped me with my dialogue and beats and has helped me orchestrate better scenes in the novel.  At this rate I should finish the first draft by the middle of May.  Much longer than I had anticipated, but I guess that's the way it goes.

We'll See

First rejection letter for a short story, re-reading it I can now understand why.  Though I still like the story it still needs work.  I resubmitted it as is to other magazines, perhaps I should have rewritten, but we'll see.

I have one flash fiction story that I really like that I might try to submit elsewhere.  Again we'll see.

The novel is coming along greatly.  I add approximately 1000 words a night for five out of seven nights.  It's gotten to the point where the characters are leading me.  I need to strike a balance between the two main characters.  My original protagonist is now following a strong powerful female lead.  We'll see.

Doubts Creep

 Yesterday I finished a 1000 word short story that I then submitted to dailysciencefiction.com.  The site says I will get a response within 3 weeks of yay or nay.  Anyway it was somewhat satisfying to finish my first real story.  I had one other story in the same vein that I submitted to everydayfiction.com. The story was the same topic but from different perspectives.  Anyway I can see that my writing got better over the weeks.  Nothing may come of it, but I just wanted to log my current happenings with my new venture.  The story was of an old man who was seeking euthanasia but only because it would help him live forever.

The novel is coming along, I have 6 chapters now.  I am struggling with keeping the strands of the story together.  The doubts of wellness are creeping in.  Is the story any good?  My protagonist is in a world from which I want to be able to get him out, yet it needs to be believable.  He's settled into his new world but I need now to get him out to find the rest of his troop.  The villain of the story is taking shape but at the same time I have to find him something he wants or rather doesn't want to lose.  I guess the obvious thing would be power.

The Process

I have currently two chapters mostly finished. I am writing a new planetary adventure.  I fear that there is no market for this but who knows.  I am struggling with life on the planet.

I'm not sure what the best process for writing is.  I keep going back to the first chapter and revising it.  I've also outlined my plot and structure.  I know the major doors and the disturbances that my characters will be going through. Right now I am focused on character development.  I've been reading many books and articles in the web concerning the creative writing method and as far as I can tell everyone has a different take.  Some say just write and don't worry about revising.  I can't do that mostly because I want to develop the characters as I go, it also helps me stay consistent as I agonize over every little word.

I've been trying to use reddit for reviews with no luck.  I'm not ready to show the chapter to my wife, she's busy.  I'm venturing through this alone.

To New Heights

I recently decided to become a writer (within the last month). There were two triggers that made this decision for me.

Trigger 1:  I was asked recently, "If you could be famous for any reason, what would you want to be famous for?"  I remembered reading the Hobbit and Dune and getting sucked into the Star Wars universe.  I realized that I would ultimately want to be famous for creating a universe from scratch.  I always had a desire to write, it was buried.

Thinking back now I can recall writing a graphic novel when I was 6 or 7.  This was of a miner who dug so deep that he encountered monsters.  I was always drawing up planets with continents and figuring out where civilization started. I would name the continents countries and come up with my own histories and explorer paths.

Trigger 2: I woke from a dream at 2 a.m. one weekend and I had to find a pencil and paper.  The dream was so vivid, complex and self consistent.  It involved life and living forever within two realms.  There was confusion at the start of it but things became clear and as I moved through the dream it was mysterious objects and people became less mysterious.  I began to understand as several realizations came to be.  By the end of the dream everything was revealed and a wonderful sense of peace came over me.

This led to me knowing that ideas are in me, that dream came from my mind and exists from ideas that my mind was able to piece together.  I knew then that the ideas would come, I simply lack the technical skills.  However this is something I believe that can be learned.

I am a big believer in what Galileo stated centuries ago, "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him discover it within himself."  I have it, we all have it, it can be released.

To New Heights