You know how sometimes you have to talk about an issue out loud to someone to work through it? Well, I figure a blog is kind of the same thing. I'll talk about a lot of random things and personal revelations here because writing them down helps me figure them out. I'm trying to teach myself, not really preach it to someone else, fyi.
Anyway, I'm working on (and by "working on" I mean: think about it every now and then and berate myself for not working on them) two stories that will hopefully turn into short books. One is called The Contract and is a scifi mini dystopia concerning a modeling agency and one girl's dream to become a model. The other, as cliche as it may sound in the wake of a booming vampire/werewolf craze, is centered around a small continent and the struggle between the werewolves and humans that live there. It is discouraging to work for two or three hours on a page or less than a page when I can read 100 pages of someone else's book in a single hour. It gives me a new appreciation for how long it must have taken the authors to write their books. If I wrote only one page every day, then I could totally write a full book and edit it in a single year. That scenario depends on me actually writing every day, however, that does not fit with my recent trend. When I think of how long it takes me to write so little, I get discouraged and go do something else, which leads to me getting even less done than if I had labored for two hours over a single page. I need to change my habits if I seriously want to be a writer. Even if neither of my stories make it to the publishing stage, I still will have gotten over a major hurdle by actually finishing a book for once. I have started so many books over the years but have never completed one. One of the major problems with procrastinating on my stories is that I forget the feel of the story and exactly what's happening, so I have to go back and brush up on the details before continuing. By the time I stop reading, I don't feel like writing any more, so that's got to change.
Even if I don't feel like it, I have to write every day to get better. I may look back on the books I spent so much time and effort on and think they're awful, but writing mediocre books and improving is a whole lot better than being a great writer who never finishes anything. All of the cheesy romance novelists are doing better than me because they actually finished their stories and got them published. Some of them are truly awful, and hopefully I write better than that, but they are still more successful than me at this point for even finishing their books at all. Don't get me wrong, some romance novels are good, but the majority I've come across make me flinch at the bad writing. Even so, cudos to the authors for being published. That's more than I can say right now. If I do end up writing a mediocre book, I can still hold it proudly in my hands and say that I wrote it and I finished it. Writing it will help me understand what it takes to write a full book and will give me practice, allowing me to get better in the future. Plus, I can make my friends and family read it, so I'll have some sort of audience.
One of the hardest parts of writing for me is rewriting. I don't mean editing; editing is my THING. One of my professors said that revision meant re-envisioning your work: looking at it in a different way, maybe even changing it in huge, sweeping ways. I have learned, albeit slowly, that "writing is rewriting" and it's not the scary monster it seems to be. As I see it, I've already written the thing, so going back to make it better is easier, less time consuming, and exciting. I get to take something I've already created and make it better! How cool is that?! Yes, I may be trying to convince myself here, but whatever.
I'm going to make it my goal not only to write in this blog approximately every day, but to finish both of those stories by the end of this year. Ready...Set...GO!
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