Working On Happily Ever After

I am not a good blogger.  That’s obvious to anyone who has checked this site.  It’s been Christmas here for almost two years. 

And who wants Christmas every day.  It would be boring instead of exciting.  Just the same ol’ same ol’. 

So I’m going to try again.  My goal is a new post each week.  It may be more often.  We’ll see.

Blogging is kind of like talking to yourself.  At least it is for me.  But then I don’t have a big following.  Yeah, that’s an understatement.  Of course, those who have checked in see the same post and wonder if I fell off the face of the earth or what. 

Not really.  The people who do check in here are friends I keep in touch with on another blog.  So they know where I am.  At least some of the time.  And I really appreciate the fact that they do keep checking back to see whether I’ve posted again.  Thanks guys.

Anyway.  I often want to work through things I’m trying to accomplish.  Or just write them down so I can remember what the heck I’m supposed to be doing.  That’s getting harder as I get older.  I’d like to think it’s because I have so many things on my mind or because I’m juggling so many balls that I lose track.  But it’s probably age. 

So what am I trying to do right now?  I’ve gone back to writing a book I originally had the concept of several years ago.  I put my other manuscript on the back burner because I could probably edit it for the next ten years and still find something else I want to change.  Also, it didn’t excite the editors and agents who read it so I’ve moved on to something new.

The plot and characters for this book have been wandering around in my mind since I put it aside.  Occasionally they’d jump up and down and wave their hands to get my attention and I’d think some more about it.  So when November and Nanowrimo rolled around again, I started it over.

As you can see, I made the 50,000 words.  And set a new goal.  To have 100,000 words done by Dec. 31.  2010.  Important I remind myself of that.  This will be the majority if not all of the story.  In a very rough and gritty form.  Not something I would let anyone read.  But I’ve found I work best if I kick my internal editor out and just run with the story.   Because without the story, I have nothing.  I can spend months trying to find the perfect first line, polishing the perfect first chapter.  And I have.  But what use is a great first line or great first chapter if you don’t have anything else.

So this is the ugly draft I’m working on.  And I’m having fun with it.  And learning.  And remembering why I started writing in the first place.  For the joy of seeing the story and characters unfold.

Nano went pretty well.  It was after I made the 50,000 I ran into a road block.  I just couldn’t get into the scene I was supposed to be writing.  I knew why I needed the scene.  The book is a romance.  It also has paranormal and mystery elements but the core of it is romance.  And my hero and heroine hadn’t spent a lot of time together.  Hard to get romantic that way.  So I added this scene.  Or tried to.  I blamed my dismal word count over the last few days to the crazy schedule we had this weekend.  Family wedding with the shower, rehearsal dinner and finally the wedding itself.  Lots of fun. 

And then we went to hear one of our son’s in concert at his college.  Long drive when I could have been writing longhand in my notebook.  And I tried.  That’s when I realized I couldn’t write the scene because it was boring. 

So today I tried a different path.  I’d had an idea and changed the prologue.  Then I started a scene that will come towards the very end of the book.  And the words flowed.  I’m very thankful to the authors who wrote the pep talks for nano.  Several of them recommended this. 

I’ll still have to deal with my boring scene.  Jazz it up or dump it and do something else to get them together.   Or the problem might be earlier in the book.  I think I’ll have a better idea of that when I finish the scene I’m working on now.

This entry was posted on December 7, 2010 at 12:15 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.