NaNoWriMo

Haven't checked in here in a while!

I've definitely had a lot on my plate lately with doing my counseling internship on top of work. That is my excuse for not getting around to writing. But at some point I've got to take control and just DO what I want rather than putting it off. You'd think I'd decide that waiting until school is over would be a good idea, but it seems like school is forever and never ending, so I don't want to wait too long.

Therefore, I've decided to join in on this year's Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) which is a yearly event in which writer's work together during the month of November to complete a 50,000 word novel. The focus is to get it done and focus less on revision and whatnot (that can come later). But this gives everyone the opportunity to write, write, write, and to not worry so much about the little details. The sense of accomplishment from writing that much can be motivating in itself. Especially when it's for fun and I don't need those 50,000 to be publish-ready.

This goal may be difficult for me to meet with the demands of my schedule. But I'm going to try to stay organized and will do what I can! I won't set my expectations too high and will try to do this for fun. For anyone interested, my profile is here.

update

I know I haven't written in forever!

I've just been really discouraged about the whole writing thing because I just plain don't have time to do the writing and research I want to do for my book. I'm still in graduate school and now that I'm doing my practicum then internship I will be working an additional 15ish hours a week, at least.

But in the meantime I think I'll work on honing my craft by doing writing exercises. I've been doing book reviews recently and I can slowly see some improvements here or there in my writing.

I've got some writing books here but I am buying another one from a friend and maybe I'll do some writing assignments every now and then to help practice. And I'll write about those here... though I don't know if I'll post them here. Don't want my stuff to be stolen!

a little progress and a compromise

I went back and forth a little on whether to do an outline first or focus on writing. And I've decided, just like everything else, it will be a compromise. I started an outline today during a training I had to sit in today -- the last of the 5 part training during which I learned that the powers that be must believe I haven't yet been to school... yes, that's right, I re-learned what I learned in social work school, experienced in the field, and then again re-learned in counseling school. But I digress... this is supposed to be about my writing!

So I started doing my outline. I have a few chapters ahead of where I am outlined and feel comfortable knowing what happens in those so I will be able to sit down and write it out well. Then I came to the realization that it doesn't have to be one way or the other. Right now I sort of like that I wrote a little, am outlining a little more, and will probably write a little more before I finish the outline. I figure this gives me a good idea, but at the same time, I don't want to box the characters and plot into something I'm not ready to.

I find this very promising.

A Couple More Frustrations

After I posted last about writing an outline, I actually decided to just write some more and I ended up finishing the chapter I was on. But I haven't added to it since. I think I'm ready to do the outline thing now.

I go back and forth constantly on being confident in my ability to do this and on thinking it's just way above me. I am picky when I read books on how "literary" they are. If they are too "simple" -- easy vocabulary, too many simple sentence structures, have a lack of depth, use lame similes and metaphors, I get frustrated. But then I read what I wrote and find that I do the exact same thing. Then I think, well, some of these that bother me are best sellers, lol! I wonder if I'm too picky about other books, and wonder what someone else would think of what I've written. I do want to have others read, but I don't know if the 3700 words I've written are enough for me to start having others critique. Maybe at 10,000 words. We'll see.

In the meantime, my plan is to work on 1) an outline and 2) setting aside time to write. I haven't been doing this at all lately. Only when I'm in the particular mood too. I need to get things down on paper before I can ever go through and revise and make what I've written even better!

some snags

It's been a little while since I've done any writing for my book. There are a couple reasons for this.

1) I've found that when I'm reading a book outside the genre of what I'm writing, my writing becomes less interesting to me. When I'm reading the same genre, I find my writing fascinating, lol! My two favorite genres are contemporary/women's fiction (which is what I'm writing) and mystery/thriller which is extremely different. I try to vary them but I guess most recently I've read mysteries and this has taken my interest away a little from writing.

2) I got to a point in my writing where I realized I don't exactly know what would happen in real life. I am at a scene where they are at the hospital. While I know some of the medical information necessary to the story, I don't know what the nurses would say to each other, to the doctors, or to the patients! I had initially planned on showing this scene rather than just mentioning it, but I'm thinking I'm going to have to change that up a little. That and I also decided that what I currently have for the first chapter should probably not be the very first thing, so I'm contemplating adding a prologue. These little thoughts have overwhlemed me a little, but I need to climb over them and get back to writing! Without actually writing, I'll never finish!

And here's another thing I've been thinking about. Different authors have different methods for writing their books. Some just write and let the characters take them where they will, but others are very methodical and write out detailed outlines for the entire book. I had a minimal outline in my head that I would add to during solitary moments. But now that I'm in the process of writing, I think I may be one who needs to make a more concrete outline. This might give me more confidence in that I'll know I have more to write about when I get to the end of the page or scene. So I may be taking the next couple days to focus more on outlining than actually writing.

First Post

Welcome to my writing blog! I have made a couple small attempts to start a book before, but never got far at all. Recently, I decided I need to just do it -- just sit down and write. So that's what I started doing, and I decided to start this blog to also write about the journey.

One of the problems I've noticed I have is that when I get excited about writing again, I will spend so much of my time reading tips about writing from books and others' blogs. I get obsessed with following up with authors to see what advice they give out, but then I spend time reading all of that and not writing! So this time I will make an effort to balance both.

I started to write just a few pages a year or so ago and then never returned to it. I recently pulled up what I had written, tweaked the story a little, and now I have something I'm very excited about writing! All I'll say for now is that one of the main characters is a social worker. It's not at all autobiographical, but we are supposed to write about what we know, right? So that's what I'm doing.