Tag: the storyteller

As you may remember from posts past, my overall plan was to finish this write through of the story by June 6th, which is a Saturday, and when I would start playing my video game reward. I worked on writing the end of the story, while reminding myself it is all rough draft to keep from over analyzing, from the outline I made a while ago. I stumbled around the final fight scene, then I started in on the final scene and I just started writing and things were just coming together. It was making sense, and I was really happy with it. I tweaked the epilogue (which I had written before as a goal point) and then I sat back and thought ‘Wow, this might actually be good, like not just ‘I got through it’, but good.’

I gushed to my husband about how happy I was that the story was good, even though the first half and second half were not the same length. So my husband asked how long they were. I told him. Then he said, “You know that means your story is only 55k words, right?”

Of course I didn’t know that. Who the heck just adds two numbers together in their head? Suffice it to say, I very quickly went from being proud of myself to realizing I didn’t have a novel length draft. (Much less a fantasy novel length draft.) And while my draft is rather rough in some places, and will need some scenes added in and such, the idea of being able to add 35k words did not seem plausible.

This is what having a mentor is for. She suggested that after letting it rest for a while, I should read through it again and find a subplot that could be expanded on. That sounded like a perfect idea to me, reminding me that sometimes seemingly horrible problems have simple answers.

So since Wednesday, my draft has been sitting, and I keep feeling like I should be writing, and then I remember that I’m taking a break. It’s a surreal experience as always. Sort of like the first week after I graduated from college when I realized I would never have to go to school again. Like ever. 😀

Worry not, as I am currently alpha reading my husband’s book (which I’ve been promising to do forever) so I’m not completely out of the writing game. I also started playing my reward game.

So this past week I was on vacation. I decided that I was not going to restrict the activities I would have time to do by scheduling more writing time than normal. Instead I gave myself a flat hour of writing per day on my current wip. I then found that with my extra time, I wanted to work on another story that has been poking around in my head for a while.

I still got a good amount done, but was glad I didn’t end up making my vacation feel like a job. Vacations are for relaxing and riding roller coasters.

I am now working my way through the ending of the story. I have an outline for it and am now just writing it out. I am, however, reminded of how poor I am at writing fight scenes. They usually end up no more creative than: “He swung his sword in a wide arch and his opponent blocked it.” unless I get my husband’s help.

I feel guilty sometimes in getting help with my writing. I’m not talking about the overall skills, or getting feedback from critique partners, but when I need help with specifics in the actual story itself. Such as when I (always) need help from my husband for fight scenes, or when I run into a plot hole that I just can’t fill and get suggestions from him. I mean I know I can’t do everything myself, but I always feel like I should be able to. I mean don’t ‘real’ authors just write rough drafts and then have critique groups and/or editors that help them tweak?

Anyone else out there feel guilty asking for help with things (anything, not just writing) that you feel like you should be doing on your own?

So first off is an assessment of my limiting my hours. First off, it did certainly help with my level of guilt. If I did my scheduled time for the day, then it was easier for me to relax and do other things. (like reading one and a half Brandon Sanderson books)

I also set a timer on my phone for the scheduled amount of time, which helps a bit in keeping me focused. Something about the time there actually counting down makes there be a sense of urgency that I don’t have when I sit down and glance at the clock and plan to write for an hour.

Of course travel for vacation is making my timing a little rough today and tomorrow, but I’m getting it in. It makes me realize that my plan on writing two hours each day on my vacation kinda puts a time crunch I don’t want to deal with on my vacation, so I’ll probably limit my time to an hour a day, meaning I won’t have the extra time I thought I might.

I don’t want to stress myself out during my vacation. That’s not the point. Even now I’m feeling a bit resentful that I have to spend time writing this post instead of relaxing.

Something else I ran into: A very important scene that exists to garner sympathy and connection with a particular character is a complete and utter roadblock. I basically had to skip it after spending two days on it with no progress. The story flows before and after it. I don’t know what to make of that. My first instinct is that the scene is in the wrong place, or unneeded, except I need it, and there’s really no where else to put the scene. No idea what to do about that yet.

And now I am on to new stuffs. I am going to plow through it even if it goes really slowly. I really want to get the second half of this book hashed out. I keep running into contradictions with my world or plot that grind me to a halt. It happens every time I get to this level of revision on a story and it’s quite the confidence killer. I am scared and frustrated and I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to fix the issues.

Yes, I’m ending on a down this week. May as well own it.

So I had a bit of a revelation this week. As my DIYMFA Mentor would say, an “Ah HA!” Moment. I was listening to a recent DIY MFA podcast on making plots without a formula, and it occurred to me that a lot of what the guest was saying was something that I was already doing in a form. It was a moment where I realized how far I’ve come from when I just wrote all day long, and figured out some things through trial, error, and grit, but never came out from under my rock.

My learning about new writing techniques and methods are now more about filling in the blanks, tweaking technique, and looking at things from alternative angles as opposed to filling in huge chunks. And that’s not to say that I don’t still have a ton to learn…

Like this week I learned that 19k words was a little too much to revise in a week. I worked on it for more hours than I usually do, but still didn’t get through everything.

I did, however, hammer out a much better ending to the Cinderella section than I had before. So it was still a productive week.

I also have a vacation coming up in the middle of may, which will allow for a lot of catch up, even though my husband has told me I am not allowed to spend the entire week writing like I did last time.

So this week, my specific measurable result will be finishing the next two sections. I don’t want to set myself up for failure by adding in that third section. It’s 15k words for editing.

I have been having a lot of trouble with my writing in recent weeks. I fell back into depression in a way I haven’t in two or three years. I struggled with this ‘failure’ for two weeks before it seemed to fade back into the background. I can still feel it there, but there’s nothing I can do about it except keep moving forward. I did not make my specific measurable result for last week.

This, of course, didn’t make my writing any easier. You may have noticed my posts have been short. I’m just embarrassed about not making any headway. I spent a week looking again into story structure, having a call with my mentor and then spending two hours of a six hour car ride talking through my story with my husband on the way to my sister-in-law’s wedding.

The first half of the book is actually good, according to structure, I just need to add in some foreshadowing, character development, and detail/description.

Then I went through what I had outlined for the second half of the book, and my husband shot down the scenes that didn’t matter, condense others into shorter scenes, and then plan out the final fight. All-in-all my ideas weren’t bad, I just needed someone who wasn’t myself to tell me when I was putting in unnecessary stuff.

Right now, however, I have very little confidence in my ability to actually write out the second half of the book. I’m drained right now from my second weekend in a row without a chance to unwind and I have a horse show this coming weekend. I’m not going to expect anything of myself this week. I need to get back to being okay with who I am again, because I haven’t been for weeks.