Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Writing is hard, you guys. :(

Hey, so, I'm writing a novel.
It's a nice little fantasy novel, and it and I get along pretty well, for the most part.
I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the year, actually...
That is, the first draft.
You see, I've been working on this novel for two years, give or take. I had about 30 pages at one point, but then I decided to change the setting, which meant I had to scrap the whole thing.
That was draft 0.5, because it doesn't really count as a first draft (imho) unless you actually finish it.
Anyhoo, I'm about 37,000 words into draft one, but I'm beginning to suspect that I'm a bad writer.
I don't mean in the sense that I can't write a good story - I like to think that I'm fairly skilled in that respect.
No, I mean that I can't seem to realize that writing takes work. My first draft has to be perfect, apparently, which means that I just wander off and let my book get lonely for weeks on end if I'm not struck with a blinding flash of inspiration. If I had a publisher, said publisher would be quite out-of-temper with me by this point.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm ridiculously lazy. "January?" I think to myself. "That'll never get here! I have plenty of time before my self-assigned deadline! Let's go watch 'Dumb Ways to Die'* again!"
I wrote all of 1,300 words today. That may sound like a lot, but since I'm shooting for somewhere between 50,000 and 75,000 words and this is the most I've written in weeks, I'm getting the sinking feeling that it's entirely inadequate.
I have all of two plot points for the second half of my book.
I still haven't ended Chapter IV.
I was severely tempted to skip over this whole 'romance' thing so I could just kill the love interest already (TIGER MAULING! :D).
In short, I have a loooooot of work to do.
And then, when this draft is finished, I get to send it off to the unwary friends and family members I've coerced into editing duties, fix it up a bit, find a literary agent, get this book published and start on that trilogy I've been bouncing around in my head for so long.
Oh, hey, life, what's that? I've still got to sort out the rest of you?
...If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hide in my pillow fort and watch Disney movies. Adieu (and yes, I know it means goodbye forever)!


*Oh, hi! Did you follow me all the way down here to see where the asterisk led? Well, this is the video that's been slowly taking over my life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw

1 comment:

  1. "Set fire to your head..."

    Haha, you're wonderful, dear. How you find these things is beyond me. :)

    ReplyDelete