Write every day

...about doing NaNoWriMo this year. Except…I don’t have an idea. Maybe I should file this entry under “take more risks.”

Still, the prospect is kind of exciting, and daunting. I’ve never done NaNo and not finished. Plus, I’ve got this trilogy to complete. Could be good. Could be a disaster. Guess I’ll find out.

I’ve been writing every other day, or so. I’ve written a few poems and (non-fiction) articles. My only fiction project was a short story that I finished today.

I like 43T; I find it very useful. But for this goal I decided to start a blog and track my progress there. I’ll still post some milestones here, like finishing a story, but I’m mostly using the blog for this goal.

Started a seminar class called “Revising the Novel” and our homework was to write a query letter for our book. I don’t feel like this counts as writing but maybe it does.

I finished the short story that I started yesterday. Yay!

I think it has a message…which is strange, considering that I wasn’t trying to write one. Weird how things turn out sometimes.

I’ve been writing on and off for years. In that time, I produced only 3 poems, a few articles, and one short story that I like.

I love writing, but I haven’t done much of it. I want to change that; I’m serious about writing, so I’m going to try to write something every day.

writing4all.ie is helping; all the other writers are posting their work, and I don’t want to be the only one with an empty page for a profile. I wrote half of a short story today; I hope I’ll finish it tomorrow, but I’m not sure how it ends.

I’ve been working with The Writer’s Book of Matches (http://www.freshboiledpeanuts.com/writersbookofmatches.html) and have managed three different exercises in 3 days. The writing isn’t great, but this evening after a frustrating day I was able to come home and drop right onto the page. For me this is an achievement.

I’ve been working with Julia Cameron’s “Right to Write” for a while now (not true: I work with it, then stop, then start over from the beginning, then stop, then start over again) but consistently have been doing morning pages. Yet, they no longer feel like they’re useful.

Some mornings they energize, help me focus and feel less coiled and expectant. Some mornings they just seem like self-centered whining. I’m wondering if I’m like a battery that has been charged to a certain point and is no longer able to charge to full capacity. Are morning pages my charge limit? I hope not.

So yesterday afternoon, I had a little spark of an idea for a scene in a story, and I wrote it down immediately. It covered about a page in word in normal font. I was relatively pleased, and I finished it off this morning, bringing it to two pages and around 1400 words.

I had, had an idea of where to take it after that, but ever time I tried to continue it, develop it into a proper story, it flops into something pathetic. fortunately, I am full of ideas, but when lots of them go to pot, it’s so easy to be put off. So just creating some different scenes and making them have potential to turn into different, full stories is a good exercise to improve writing, and to write everyday. I keep having to tell myself to not focus on one character or story start every time, because it causes me to become demotivated after a while.

Okay enough reading about what you want to do; go and do it!

I’m going to attempt to write at least 1000 words a day on my new project. After that I will give myself time to work on other smaller projects. This will be hard, but I have to force myself to do it.