Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Writing work

I'm trying out the Performancing extension on Firefox. It seems like a pretty cool blogging feature. We'll see how well it works after this post.
Anyway, I wrote again today. I'll probably do some more before I go to work as well. So far, I've written almost 400 words. It was a reboot of the story I started yesterday. I felt like I didn't know where to go with the plot. Now, the story has a stronger plot element and I have a better sense of the characters (the main character has completely changed, with a whole new voice that I'm enjoying.)
At the Den of Ego and Iniquity, Richard Parks has an interesting post about writing regularly and the benefits thereof. He mentions Jay Lake's writing plan, the idea that you should write at least one story a week, even if it's a piece of flash fiction. I would love to do that. Right now, I'm trying just to reach completing a story, sticking with a story until it's done.
Again, that's why I'm blogging about writing. I'm trying to analyze my process a little and make it better. One of the things I need to do is stick with a story, don't get bored with it. Keep writing it, no matter what. Today, as I said, I started the story over and it's now something completely different -- though the background and central idea remain much the same. As I continue writing, I have to develop the story and see if it works. It's important to remember that I can't know how well something works until I finish it.
Often, I stall on my stories because I spend some time away from it. I don't write over a weekend, or I just procrastinate. When I go back, I'm just not in the mindset of the story anymore and it's put away. (I don't throw anything away, but I've rarely gone back to those things either.) So, I really need to finish a first draft by Friday. That would be the best thing. Alternately, if I could fit in writing time over the weekend, I could keep going. But that could be hard to accomplish.
So my goal for the next two days is to finish a draft of this story. I need to write more today, so I'm going to get to that right now.

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