Becoming the writer I want to be

Last week, four of the days I worked two hours/day on the paper. Those days, I wrote a poem per day. I've written prose often in this "work shift" kind of way, but never poetry. So that was an interesting experiment. Good results too.

 

A frustrating days work today. My internet went down for over an hour just as I was about to start writing, losing me an hour of allocated work time. I still managed to get 1471 words done which is good, but now everything has been pushed back even further than it already was.

EDIT: Couldnt resist going back to make up for lost time. New total is 2299 words.

 

Hello again!

I've returned from my two-week break away from working on my novel and giving my mind some mental rest from the burn out that was beginning to form on the horizon. I want to give a special thanks to @AtomicTango for taking time from his own writing to look at my work and give me some helpful advice to go forward with the writing. Your feedback is sincere and it felt amazing to know you could see that I had a pretty solid start and that some changes would make it stronger and allow me to write the rest of the novel more effectively. I intended to start splitting the first chapter in half and expanding/revising the prison sequence today but since I woke up late, it'll be tomorrow before that work begins, but even then, I'm certain it won't be until Wednesday at the earliest before I get back to work on my book. However, with you guys around, I'm sure I'll find my motivation real quick, haha.

I wanted to take this time and say that it's been over a year since I got back into writing seriously and I just finished my 11th short story this afternoon. When adding up the words, I discovered that I had written almost 30,000 words for the short stories alone. I'm at 29,923 words in total (or 2720 words per story). Add that onto the 10,000 words or so I've written for my novel, I've written almost 40,000 words this year in those two fields alone. This may not mean much to you guys, but considering that I've been spending 90% of my time working on college stuff, writing this much in the span of a year is a great deal. Plus, I've also got a nice bundle of 20 haikus at the moment and I'm working on revising and organizing my other poems.

I guess I wanted to give you guys an update, especially since I had a rough time last week because some writer said that I wasn't good at anything. That wasn't Atomic, but someone else and their sharp criticism/negativity made me upset, but I'm doing better now. I'm sure you guys believe that I'm a good writer from the dedication and hard work I've put into everything up to this point. However, I'm back now and I intend to get back to business in no time.

 

2660 words today, FINALLY finishing the chapter. That took so long I am tempted to take tomorrow off to recharge, as the next chapter is very long too.

 

Well, I just divided Chapter 1 into two chapters. The second half that's now Chapter 2 just needs a name change and it's all good, but Chapter 1's the one where the expansion and revisions are going to come in. I'll do the name change now and try to write as much as I can in Chapter 1.

Edit: I followed through with @AtomicTango's advice and I've got some notes for Chapter 1 written in the document and I've split it into two. Not much work done this morning, but I did rewrite some parts of Chapter 2 and I'll probably do so more revision work on that today.

 

This happened to me, with someone on this site (not the guy who commented on the thread, it was years before that) and it was really demoralising, especially when I defended myself and got ignored. Glad to see you are doing better!

 

Thanks! I spent the morning reading up more on showing, not telling so that's going to be my focus on writing going forward. I'll use the short stories as an evolution of my style, but I won't rewrite them and keep them as side pieces for potential publication when I'm older and can correct the telling part. They'll resemble stepping stones to show how I've evolved as a writer and it may take me a bit longer to revise and correct the novel now that I see this, but I do want my readers to connect so I'll do anything to see that happen. I am. I hope you're doing just as well.

 

I am, just hit 100 pages in book 2.

 

Congratulations man! Have you looked into publication just yet?

 

I'm planning on writing all the books before I do that, as well as edit them as I go.

 

In the end I didnt take today off, but I made a conscious effort to slow down and got 1050 words done. This chapter is gonna take a long time even if I rush so I dont see a point in doing so.

 

I definitely think its a good idea to read as much fiction as you realistically can, not only to boost creativity but also to inform your own writing style and process. I know for a fact I would not have felt the desire to write if I didn't get inspired by reading first.

 

Monday: n/a
Tuesday: 407 words

So I finally wrote again this morning! It's not up to my usual word quota as I'd like but considering that I'm revising and rewriting a chapter I already did most of the work on, I think it's okay to lower my word quota to 400 or so until I'm complete with the revisions. It was a bit slower because I deleted several passages that only told about things, but didn't show anything, which has been a consistent problem in my writing until now (hopefully). I'm wanting to do more to show more and set up the scene to connect with the reader so this first chapter may be a bit slower to work on than what I'd like, but that's okay. As Atomic told me, it's better to do this now than down the road when I'd have a bigger mess to tango with, haha.

That's good to hear! I'm going to send you a message with the new opening to see if I'm getting the hang of showing more.

Thanks man! It's great to be able to return to writing my project again. I feel refreshed and determined to give it all I got. I hope to continue going forward with my progress and hoping for the best!

 

2232 words today. I am hoping to get this chapter done early next week, then finish the next chapter before that week ends. After that I want to take a day off writing to plan out the next set of chapters. Ideally I want to coincide finishing act 4 and my mid-act break with the Christmas break, but at this point I still cant tell how likely that is.

 

Monday: n/a
Tuesday: n/a
Wednesday: 407 words
Thursday: 424 words

I don't know why I messed up on the word count but as you can see above, I fixed my error this morning so it's all good. I'm going a bit slower in the revision and expansion since I don't want to lose my grip on showing, not telling. I think it's going well so far. I plan to write 400 words daily for the rest of the month so that I can focus on this chapter and try to get a grasp of it down. I think it's going good so far and that this slower pace is allowing me to not just write quickly, but to seriously think about what I want my story to tell and carefully construct the setting so that my readers can connect with it. Meanwhile, I've got a major paper coming up so this slower pace can work in my favor.

 

I too suffer from POIS