Friday, September 30, 2011

And I Made It

So, tomorrow was my deadline to finish my current work. That would have given me a week off to deal with a definitely going to be stressful week at work before diving into revisions on a previous work that has been haunting me for the last couple of weeks. And as of about 15 minutes ago I wrapped up the last chapter that needed to be done on this project!

I checked my note cards to make sure that I have covered everything that I wanted to in this draft and I have done so. And a whole lot more! It really veered off in its own direction as I was writing, as most of my stuff is wont to do, but that is perfectly ok. This was actually the first time I had a beginning, middle, and an end before I even started writing. Usually I have one of the three and then kind of fit things around it. It is, by far, bare bones and maybe a little incoherent in places but that's what revisions are for. It has everything a story needs; it just has to be polished until it shines. And polishing will probably start in January.

The next month is dedicated to working on round 2 revisions of my previous work and also planning for NaNoWriMo. But stay tuned, because I have something that I'm toying with right now and if it works out the way I want it to I will have something completely new (for me) coming soon.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Breakthrough

So, the other night, in my attempt to get to sleep, my mind wandered off into novel land. Normally, I fully enjoy being there as I know that it means I'm making progress towards something, but this time I was a little perturbed. You see, the breakthrough I had was NOT for the ms I'm currently working on! How is this fair? All I want to do is finish this WIP before the end of the month so when I take my vacation from work I can focus on the project that said breakthrough was about. It's too hard to have both story lines going on in my head right now. They're very different types of stories and it would not be good to confuse the two. I have 14 days (eep!) to finish 4 chapters, if nothing else in this ms comes to light it's completely do-able.

That being said... I'm so excited about this breakthrough!! I've never really been able to piece everything together on the project and it's been so frustrating. There always seemed to be something missing but I could never put my finger on it. And then, there I was, laying in bed all ready to go to sleep and there was the answer. "It's HER he wants!" I'm 99% sure the words actually flashed up along my eyelids, in neon. It was the weirdest thing ever. And I know that statement probably means nothing to you but it will. If I can get what I want done during vacation I will be starting to post more about my actual work than just what I'm working on. Promise.

I really want to get started on this and see how it makes different parts come together but I know that I need to finish my current WIP before I do. If I abandon it now it will never get finished. And it has to get finished! I'm really trying to get on this finish what you start bandwagon. So I will finish in 14 days and in the mean time I will take notes on everything having to do with her.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Moving Right Along

So surprisingly enough I actually did something I said I was going to do regarding this WIP. A week or so ago I went chapter by chapter of stuff that I've already written and made a note card with a brief synopsis of what happened in the chapter, characters introduced (if any) and where I thought it needed to go. After a few hours of that I pulled out my little pop-up tape thingy and taped all those little cards in a straight line. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped back to view it all. Guess what! There aren't as missing elements as I thought there were!! Woot.

I still have quite a bit of work to do just to finish this first draft, but it really isn't as patchy as I originally thought it was. I am super excited about it. It has given me the motivation to get working again. Maybe it was actually seeing the whole thing laid out in front of me or the fact that it was a bunch of little pieces that made up the whole but I'm feeling (somewhat) good about this thing. So I plucked one of those fill in type note cards and sat down to writing. Only 6 more to go!