Do you know I actually thought this would be easy?

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Idiot.

Complex characters.

A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters…you should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.

– James Scott Bell, Fiction Attack

Too much of a rookie to know whether I agree or disagree with the ‘simple plot’ part of this, but I have been thinking about this quote for a couple days now and I know my character could benefit from being more complex.

Getting stuck as I go along.

Keep hitting little rough patches in my story where I’ll pause because I don’t know how to continue. So far, I’ve just forced myself to power through it, even if it leads to bad dialogue or character doing silly things. I  feel like I can’t slow down right now or I’ll eventually slow down too much and come to a complete stop.

I’m nervous that pushing through it like this might lead to my first draft spiraling out of control or heading in some unwanted direction, but I feel like I just have to keep going for now. I can’t pause and brainstorm  when I hit these places where I feel stuck, because I know myself well enough to know one of my ‘brainstorms’ can last months or even years, because it really just means putting a project on the backburner to simmer in the back of my head until I eventually forget it or give up on it.

It’s something.

Word count for today: 776.

(Captain Picard is clapping for me like, ‘Good job!’ but then he’s turning to Data and he’s all like, ‘Jesus, 776? I write more than that in the Captain’s Log when I describe how I prepare my tea.’ Shut up, Picard.)

Anyways, I’m out of red wine so I’m sitting here with a glass of bourbon, since I drank about 8 cups of coffee earlier today while writing and now I need something to unwind (it’s such a healthy cycle!). Well, it’s not straight up bourbon because I’m not that badass, but I made myself a milk punch because I almost hit a thousand words today and I feel it’s well deserved (and also because, you know, no more wine).

I feel good about the progress I made today! It’s still not much, but it’s more than yesterday. And maybe tomorrow I’ll hit a thousand words! One can hope.

The story is still slogging along and I’m having to force it to progress, but I’m hoping it’s just because I’m rusty and I need to power through it in order to get things moving again. Or it could just mean this story is horrible, but you know what? It’s the first novel I’m ever trying to write, so I think that’s okay. I just feel so much pressure about it since I quit my job to pursue this. But I need to store that anxiety away somewhere and not let it creep over me until I’m paralyzed.

So, I’m off for more milk punch and Buffy. I feel good about today.

Something I realized while on the freeway today.

Blogger Katie May was kind enough to point out to me in my last post that I shouldn’t get down on myself for only writing 517 words in a day – that even if I just wrote 517 words in every day, it would still be 15,510 words in a month.

I was thinking about that today while on the road and suddenly it hit me: I quit my job back at the end of May, and have been floundering around since then, worrying about whether I made a mistake and whether or not I should be a writer.

If instead of worrying, I had simply sat down and wrote 500 words a day, even if they were terrible, even if it was the worst story ever – I would probably have somewhere around 42,000 words now (I’m terrible at math, so don’t quote me on that).

42,000 words.

So I need to stop hussing and fussing and just sit down and write. Yes, there is the possibility that it will end up being awful, but I won’t know until it’s done.

A pittance.

517 words. That’s it. That’s all I got done today. 517 more words towards the novel. That’s a fingernail where I need a whole body.

Why can’t I seem to focus and make real progress?

It’s something

Wrote 700 words today towards the novel. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

Okay, here goes.

So I didn’t get any writing done yesterday, but I had the second worst hangover of all history. Apparently, drinking an exorbitant amount of red wine on an empty stomach is not a great idea.

So Sunday was null. And here I am now, Monday afternoon.

Let’s do this thing.

Interesting thing I noticed as I wrote.

I mentioned that I was having trouble writing this short story, that I felt like I kept writing and writing and it wasn’t going anywhere. This was stuck in the back of my head even as I wasn’t writing, a fuzzy ball of lint sort of thought that kept clinging to the back of my mind as I drove and did chores and showered, that kept muttering, “What’s wrong with it? Why can’t I get it moving?”

And then it hit me, suddenly and unexpectedly, when I was in that hazy shadow space right before falling asleep two nights ago. The character was supposed to be a girl.

The thought passed in and out of my head quickly, but still it felt certain, right. I thought it over for a brief second and then promptly fell asleep.

The next day when I sat down to write, I stared at the story in front of me. And then I began to type, jumping right back into the middle of things, changing the name of the character and the ‘him’ to ‘her’ without going back and revising, just doing it. And suddenly, everything started flowing.

It was such a strange experience. The other characters in the story suddenly seemed more comfortable. Everyone could talk with more ease. They were learning from each other where before they were simply going through the motions. I wondered briefly if this is what authors meant when they say that their characters sometimes take on a life of their own. I wasn’t forcing them to do things anymore; they were speaking for themselves, they were helping things move towards an end goal.

And then I hit the end. Boom, finished. Two weeks of trying to write a simple short story and all it took was changing the ‘he’ to a ‘she’ to give it motion.

I feel crazypants now that I’m writing the experience down, but that’s how it felt. And I think what I can learn from this is to sometimes let my gut and the sleepy, quiet part of my mind do the thinking. I was trying to jam all the pieces together and make them fit, but I think sometimes you can’t hulk-smash fiction. Yeah, I have to be strict and diligent with myself if I want to get anything done, but it’s okay to let in a little bit of the koala-brain. You know, since koalas are sleepy little things, chomping slowly on eucalyptus leaves with half-closed eyes. Koala-brain was all like, ‘yo, baby. s’okay. You know how you’re falling asleep right now? How you all sleepy and fuzzy right now? Here, I’m gonna sneak this idea in while you are in this state. Nom nom. Eucalyptus.”

And on that note, I leave. Because I’ve hung my crazypants up on the line to dry and the whooooole world can see it now.

Writerly accomplishments today: zero.

Don’t tell anyone, okay?

I’m really just failing myself, I know. Me and the guy who’s working 9 to 5 help me try and accomplish my dream, I mean. Ugh. Way to go, June.

Does writing in this blog count? No.

It’s just that…I worked today at my volunteer position and it always exhausts me. And afterward, when I came home, well, I just needed to take a nap, and then my brother stopped by unannounced, and talking, and food, and…and the day snowballed into midnight and now here I am, too tired to try and approach my hot mess of a short story.

Ugh. Okay fine. Give me fifteen minutes to work on it so I don’t hate myself so much. Be right back.

***
Fifteen minutes has passed, and I’ve written a little bit more in the short story that’s going nowhere. It’s like I keep writing, but the story isn’t moving, like trying to go upwards on a downwards escalator. But whatever. I’m going to finish this story, no matter how awful it is. I have to finish it. I have to know I can finish a piece of fiction, or I’m afraid I won’t be able to move on and accomplish anything bigger like I want to. And it’s the first fiction I’ve written in a very long time, so I think it’s okay if it’s terrible. I need to keep going.

So, Thursday was a bit of a bust. Here’s hoping I have a little more progress I can blog about tomorrow.