One Lowly Writer

I've learned that getting people to read your work is hard as hell. I had to bug a few friends just to vote for my piece, and I don't think I've convinced any stranger to. Is my writing really that bad?

Well, bad or not, I'm having a lot of fun writing this novel. It's surprising actually. I've labeled it as romance even though I've never written one before. In fact, romance is hardly ever in my stories, and when it is it's usually tragic. But I fell in love with my main character, Jane, and her backstory and I wanted to share it with the world. And if one person finds it as special as I have then all the better.

Dusk of Evendale - Plain Jane is a girl misunderstood in her Victorian society of Evendale. The Dusk of Evendale is the legendary beast that roams the forests and mountains surrounding the town with his pack of crazed hellhounds, and has kept the people trapped within for over a hundred years. When Jane is accused of bludgeoning a man to death and sentenced to hang, she feels her only option is to escape into the forbidden mountains. There she encounters the Dusk, but instead of a monster what she finds is a man unlike any she’s ever known.

Ugh, a year? A year since my last entry?

Well, I'm pleased to say I'm finally showing my writing to the world. I've kept it to myself for too long. I'm hoping that by gaining readers it'll force me into finishing and to continuously work on it. I always give up. Always. Not this time. People, don't let me!

You can find my WIP here, The Last Dragon Keeper. Read it and if you can, vote. I welcome all comments!

Aside from working on even more RPGs, I've actually joined JulNoWriMo as a last second decision. I wasn't going to and considered waiting until August, but with a late night plot bunny attack I went ahead and tried for the first day wordcount. And passed. By the first day I already had almost twice as much as I wrote for NaNo '08. After my epic fail, I would hope that wouldn't be a hard goal to pass...

Now I'm officially at 3,551 words. My story has very little planning aside from vague skeletons of characters and a plot, but that's all right. Thanks to this nifty contraption I found called Write or Die, I don't have the time to procrastinate or stop for ideas. So who the hell cares if it makes sense right now?

Current WC: 3,551
Mood: Lazy with a monster headache
Last thing wrote: He looked just as angry, but if he was he hid it well behind his words. "I'm H of G, Captain of the Blanks. We're here in search of someone, someone you might have here."

Note to self: Quit playing off of badly produced movie lines, and find some names.

 Four minutes until the end of NaNo '08, and I am finishing with 868 words. I don't think I've ever failed so terribly before. Even the last WriMos I've been involved with, I've always written at least 17k. This one? Didn't even get to 1k. Couldn't bring myself to go further than that, and now? Who knows if I have the courage to try it again. It's a miserable feeling. Like last year around this time when I felt elated and ecstatic, now I'm at the opposite end. It sucks.

Midnight just struck. Time to go mope.

 Yep. Believe it or not, two weeks in and I only have a word count of 594 words...not even worth mentioning, in my opinion. I'd rather have a big fat zero than look at that. So what happened? I honestly don't know. Slow going Saturday morning on the 1st because I couldn't figure out how to start the story, and then when I finally did? I actually became physically ill looking at it. I've never had that happen to me before. Ever! Even when I hate how my story is going, it's just annoying not...diseased.

Then about three days later when I still had nothing, I grew depressed. Needless to say I more or less gave up and thought, "If inspiration comes to me before the end, the fine. If not? I guess I've failed." Unfortunately it didn't end so easily for me. I've been thinking about my failure constantly, and had numerous dreams about it. Only in these dreams I'm actually...you know...writing. So then when I wake up and stare at my pathetic word count, I get even more depressed.

But recently I came across a story idea. It really has no basic plot, or even much action in it at all, and I think it's mainly character development than anything else, but...who cares? It's my story, and if that's the way I want to write it, even if it's much different than what I usually do, oh well. Now I just need to start on it. Will I actually get to 50k? Doubtful...but possible. We'll see.

 And I still have a very small skeleton of a story. I don't even have characters anymore. Tell me, how could I have started out in September with a full plot, characters, research, and the beginning work of an outline to having a basic plot and nothing else? How could I have backtracked so far?

I admit, it's stressing me out because I never started a WriMo with this little before, but I'm also excited about the tiny idea I do have. The first was becoming too much for me, so I scrapped it and decided to start over. I think it's going to be a matter of writing blindly and seeing what happens to pop out in the process. I'm really hoping of finding some jewels in the amount of crud I know most of it is going to be. Even if it's just one bloody idea or character, I'll be happy.

All in all, I'm stressed but excited. It'll be interesting to see the end result. 

In other news, I don't have the stuff I usually have with me when NaNo starts. I have a feeling I'll be waiting in line at Walmart with the Halloween crowd, hours before midnight, my cart full of the crap I need. But that's all right. It can't be NaNo without my nifty gloves or inspiration candles!

 Okay, so my muse lied to me. Or something. While my general plot still involves Asher, it now has like...four other main characters. Not only have I had to change my entire plot around (which I still don't really know what it is), I had to lose the title, too...Sadness. I really liked that title. But right now I'm more worried about the plot, and trying to figure out my characters then how to tie them all together. I'm not even sure if there is going to be a generalized plot. I might just go with exploring my characters' lives, and seeing how that turns out.

All I know is, I'm freakin stressed. There's so many holes to fill, and although I still have twenty-one days, I've already spent the last twenty just trying to get this far...and if anything I've backtracked, not stepped forward. So yeah, it's a pain. More often than not I feel like stabbing the characters, the plot, the whole blasted story, chucking it, and starting over. But then when I try that, I just go back to my characters...Sigh. They keep reviving themselves, the little bastards.

And now I'm up with heartburn after two hours of sleep, thinking, yet again, of how I'm going to get this stupid story to work. Heaven help me.

 Wow, it's been many months since I've written in here. But actually I have been writing in general. A lot. An RPG a friend and I are writing together called "A Soul for A Secret". We started it back in April and have been writing consistently every day, rocketing up a nice WC. I'm really pleased with it. But now, NaNoWriMo is coming up, and it's time to start writing by myself again.

This year's story will be pretty different than my past ones. It's actually a backstory to one of my characters in the RPG, as I began delving more into his past and found there was a lot of interesting things that had happened to him that had yet to be written about. So, I'm taking it on myself to do that. It's going to be pretty dark and gruesome. The transition of Asher Rimedur, starting as an innocent, playful fourteen-year-old noble who desires to travel to the main capitol to attend the university, broadening his education, and ends as a callous, sadistic twenty-seven-year-old assassin who has been chosen by the Brotherhood to be the "Father" of their satanic cult.

I'm excited about it. I think, as long as I can express it the right way, it's going to be a great story. Just forty more days until NaNo!

It's time to face the facts; procrastination and failure tend to rule over me. But constantly saying that isn't making it any better. It isn't going to write words on paper. In fact it's not doing much of anything good but creating some sort of a pity party.

So, now that it's been stated, am I going to do anything about it? Am I going to focus on my writing and begin to write instead of telling myself I need to?

No more excuses. No more complaints. If I don't write anything then there's no point in me posting any more on this blog.

Man, I suck...Still haven't been able to bounce back from my failure at NaNoFiMo. How many words have I written since the start of this year? 160! It's pathetic! I feel ashamed to call myself a writer. And miserable. Definitely miserable.

I also think I can't make up my mind on which book to write. I really need to continue on my NaNo2007 novel. It's the most I've written in any of my stories, so it would make sense I would aim to finish it before starting anything else. I also need to finish my NaNo2006 novel...Oy ve.

I'm not feeling too good :(

NaNoWriYe WC: 160