Wrote out the full plot for the story I’d been writing bit by bit, but got stuck on and stopped about a week ago. I still liked the idea, but this is what always happens…I write a few lines or paragraphs and then it just goes nowhere. So tonight I thought to myself, just sit down and write a story, even if it’s a paragraph long and poorly written. Tell a tale, from start to finish. I realize that for me, plotting and actually storytelling are the hardest parts, not the seeds or the language or anything like that. So we’ll see if anything comes of this exercise the next time I sit down to write. I need to think of this as simple practice…the quality of the finished story is not the point, at least for now…the point is just to write full stories so that maybe one day, I can write good stories.
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Well, every large goal has to be broken down into several smaller, more manageable goals. So, for me the first one is to complete a draft of an entire short story (at least 3,000 words) by the beginning of Trinity Term. I know this gives me a lot of time for a single story, but with taking my options paper and writing my thesis, and beginning to prepare for exams, time for fiction writing will be very very short.
Another 500 words…slowly but surely. It’s no good yet but the point is just to get the story on the page. I can always go back and make it sound good later, right?
Had another story idea, out of the blue, from the line of a song I just happened to listen to on the radio…the funny thing was, I only listened because there was nothing else on. I wrote a paragraph tonight…not much, but the goal at this point is just to write consistently, to get words on paper. Hopefully I’ll have more flow if/when I try again tomorrow, and maybe soon I can move onto working with my first idea. Either way, one step closer to another completed story and a chance at publication!
I haven’t completed a story in awhile, but tonight I went through some old magazines and clipped pictures that intrigued me, even if I didn’t know why. In the process, I started to make connections between the pictures and now I have a plot idea! Very exciting. Now I have to make time to sit down and work on it consistently. As always, I expect the major challenge will be actually finishing the story, instead of running out of steam a couple of pages in…
