Sunday, January 29, 2012

Writing Resolution: Week 4

Resolution Icon
My New Year's Resolution was to write. Preferably for a novel, but any creative writing will suffice. I must have my butt in my chair behind my desk for two hours each night to write. The time frame I set up was from 6-8pm Monday through Friday. Weekly posts will report on my progress and keep me on track!


Week Four Results:
Did I write all five days for two hours? YES
Word count for the week = 3093 words


What I Learned This Week:
  1. I didn't increase from last week's word count, but I'm okay with that because this week was rough at work.  Report card time makes me want to pull my hair out.
  2. I did a better job of balancing my writing and reading time this week.  I finished TWO books, and I am thus a much happier person.  (Finished books were Liesl and Po and Cinder.  Look for my review of Cinder tomorrow!)  
  3. I'm writing a bunch of random scenes right now.  Nothing is in order.  I don't know if I'll hate myself later when I have to pull things together, but I'm learning about each character as I hop around.  At some point I'll probably need to make some scene cards and start arranging things and figuring out what I need to write to fill in holes.  I'm kind of likening my creative process to how they do movies.  Don't they not film the scenes in order?  And sometimes go back and re-film?  And then edit everything together.  Yeah.  That's what I'm doing.  
  4. Writing creepy scenes, about ghosts, at night... FREAKS ME OUT.  I don't read horror books.  That's the one genre I stay away from.  And these will be nice ghosts, but they're still DEAD PEOPLE.  And even if I know they aren't real (since they're from my head), I'm still getting freaked out.  Come on Winter, hurry up and be over so I have some daylight in which to write in... and then don't get scared.
  5. I just wrote a scene with multiple mentions of the word pink and lots of butterflies.  It kind of makes me want to hurl at the girliness of it.  I'm so not a pink and butterflies person.  Where did this come from?  And the bigger question being... will I keep it?  Is there a way to make butterflies less girly?  If I mention proboscis and antennae... will that help?

Anyone else write scenes out of order?
Anyone else scared of ghosts?
Anyone else scared of pink and butterflies?


And a big "woo hoo!" for keeping my resolution through the whole month of January!!!

7 comments:

  1. That's awesome! It's hard keeping writing goals (especially something as big as two hours a day). I almost never write scenes out of order, but I do find that writing scenes that won't make the final cut because they're from the pov of a secondary character can give me a better idea of what my secondary characters are like.

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    1. I think what's kept me to my goal is forcing myself to post on my progress each week. The threat of admitting failure to the public is a good motivator.

      And I totally agree with you about slipping into a secondary character's head. It really helps flesh them out as a character (and could be great to share with readers later!)

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  2. I think that it is beyond awesome that you have stuck to it all this week. Kudos! Also, about writing things out of order - I think that just getting anything on the page is helpful and it's another way to get to know your characters. So woo! Keep it up!

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    1. Some days it's been really hard to write anything and just getting something on the page is all I can do. Then every once in awhile a gem pops out on the page, and makes it worth it. :)

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  3. I keep trying to put myself on a schedule, but it hasn't worked so far. But it seems like it's working for you. I just tried writing out of order and I really enjoyed it, but I'm going to have some major rewriting to do in the next draft. The next time I try writing out of order I'm going to outline a whole lot better! I'm really excited to follow your writing updates. It really motivates me to connect with people who are just as committed to making writing a priority. :)

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    1. Me too! I've been searching for more book blogs where the blogger also writes because I love reading about other people's progress and thoughts on writing! I'm so glad I found your blog! :)

      And I'm glad I'm not the only crazy person who likes writing out of order!

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  4. Hehehe writing about scary things while it is dark outside would freak me out too :P

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