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Watch me wrestle with a writing challenge, Jack Bauer-style. |
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An on-line add for a CD promised to teach me how to write a book in 28 days. I gave myself 2 months. Can I do that? Countdown begins June 21, 2005. |
| Whoa... came back after a short break to quite a few messages and reviews to return... will take me a while to sort through. Meanwhile, writing chapter 7... 33 still to go  Decided to stop playing around and signed up for a WOW workshop (at writersdigest) and for a 1-year one-on-one writing mentoring programme. I've learnt so much in the last month of daily writing. I'm behind my targets in terms of page count, but I've opened a totally new world for myself. In the final three weeks of the countdown, I should finish 10-15 chapters... minimum editing, maximum writing. Then, I guess I'll have to extend the deadline as my family will be back |
| Not sure about you guys, but I keep being visited by people who give strange reviews. Just today, on one of my 'better' pieces: "Wow - great job! Kept my interest from beginning to end. Well done! Keep writing! Rating: 3.5". I ask what was wrong with the piece - in return, silence. Would it qualify as a 'hate review'? Not that I mind low ratings. I've developed good partnerships with folks who gave me ratings below 3 with excellent insights... Being philosophically inclined, I decided that, in the end of the day, ratings from intidy reviewers don't matter. I'm learning and I'm moving steadily along the way to being published. THIS matters. And yet, such reviews made me write a whole journal entry? Hmmm.  |
| Progressing aganist my objectives. Almost finished chapters 4 and 5 (I write a bit of both at the same time). I'm now at about 17,000 words. Another breakdown at home. My fiance fell asleep in the living room, and I sat down to write a bit. I kept trying to wake her up but she didn't move. One hour later, she stood up and told me I had no right to write and she was hurt because I hadn't changed. She keeps calling my writing "typing". Like in, "your typing annoys me", "I can't live in the same room with your typing", etc. My calls to see it as my passion do nothing to her. She reasons: dancing is passion, because it's emotional and engaging. Surfing is passion because it comes from the sea and the wind. But how "typing at computer" can be passion? It's just typing and staring at the wall. I went mad with the accumulated fury. She went mad with the accumulated pain. Both of us got scared. Then we made up, and became very sad. I think we both realised that we were a razor's edge away from breaking up. It made us feel how much we are in love. Today we went to the civil office and applied for the marriage papers. We were very lyrical and determined to make this work. Well, next three weeks will be a writing marathon. I'll be alone after work! |
| So, a tally: One month before completion of my targeted 40 chapters. I have 6 chapters (4 well done, 1 medium, 1 rare). The next three weeks should be a breakthrough. My little family's gone for three weeks to the different countries of their origin. I'll be alone! *smile through tears* At any rate, seems that my better half understood my passion for writing and became sympathetic to it. We both changed our behaviours. No more dramatic scenes. Should be easier from now on. We deciced to get married - and today went to the matrenity clinic and heard the heartbeat of our new child inside her. This site continues to be great for getting insights. I review a lot, and get lots of reviews back... Can't thank these people enough. One small pain: a few drive-by reviewers leaving scars on my tender artist heart. "Great work - keep writing! Rating: 3.5." What? *blink - blink* But that's OK. I'll heal. Made my work available to registered authors only, since all of the "great work - low rating" comments with zero suggestions were from users ranked below that. Next target: 7 well-done chapters by the end of this weekend... |
| One of the fast writing ideas is this: - Think of the flow of your book - Flesh out your chapters (all of them) with one-liners on what's gonna happen there. - Select three 'action words' for each of this one-liners that show feeling, smell, look, etc. - Use these action words to sparkle your writing. - Write just under a page for each of the one-liners. Example of how I kicked off my novel: One-liner: "How did it feel on top of the Mexican Pyramid?" Action words: Sun, Pain, Surprise. I used all three words in my first paragraph, and the novel was rolling... This method cures the writer block, and in 5-10 minutes of fast writing you have a page. Here comes the calculation: Each one-liner gives you just under a page of text. So you finish a chapter of 10-15 pages in 2-3 hours (sometimes 1 hour). In 80 - 120 hours of writing - ba-BAM! you have a novel of 400+ pages. Professionals of this method say that when you get into it, a page takes mere 5-7 minutes... 50 minutes per chapter... 35 hours per novel... Work 2 hours per day - and you're done in just over 2 weeks. That's the idea... my problem is, I can't really follow this rigid schedule. As soon as I do my chapter outline, I begin changing it. And changing. And changing. With every page I write, I get so many ideas that I've got to revise the whole outline. My 5 chapters gave me 64 pages; but it took me 3 weeks of writing and *mainly* re-writing before I got it right. Do some people get it right from the first go? Lucky ones! |
| Thanks for everyone who commented to the previous entry You helped me to look at the reality soberly. We decided to refresh our relationship - went for a full weekend of hiking in the mountains. We saw again why we were in love in the first place. Driving there, I told her how I love my characters as if they were my children, and how difficult it is to express them so that others care. We'll see. So today I restarted writing and posted my third chapter ( "Invalid Item"  ). Wrote it first as a milieu-setter, but then got bored and changed it completely.I've been practicing two things: - Writing fights. Tough!!! Creating the feel of fast movement, while giving believable motivations to the participants' behaviours... - Inserting critical milieu info into the narration. I'm a firm hater of long descriptive passages. I want my readers to 'see' the place without having to 'study' it. I've been trying to ground my guy's actions into his own reality, which is so different from ours... Fascinating, but so very difficult. |
| The day before yesterday my fiance and I had a serious conversation on my writing. She thinks I betrayed her. I didn't write that much when we were in Japan; now I write every evening. She said she'd call off engagement if I continue writing. Even though she's pregnant with my child (3 months), she'd leave me and go back to Japan. So I tried to change. Instead of writing in the evenings, I woke up at 5 am for a couple of days, despite one of the year's toughest periods at work. This morning I had the misfortune to ask if she appreciated what I did. "But now you'll be sleepy on the weekend!" she replied. I blew up. I actually shouted at her with bad words. She cried. Then she became colder than ice. At lunch today (we work at the same place) she was polite and distant. She has me in the corner. She tells me writing is my problem and I've got to resolve it without her being a part of it. My writing should just quietly die for her, disolve into the air. I can only write if she doesn't see it. I suggested I go to an 80% work schedule. She demanded that I ensure the 100% of income because of 2 kids and it's not negotiable. Herself, she wants to quit working and become a home mom. Now; what do I do. I still love her; and my son adores her. She bears my child, whom I already love. |
| Oh, drats. 16 days out of my 28-day challenge passed, and I am at Chapter 3 out of 40. Hmm. Not to get discouraged, I make an executive decision to move my deadline to August 20. Is it a 'boo' or a 'huray'? A sigh of relief comes out of my chest. Still tight, but more doable. So, probably I did the right thing here. |
| Some writers put a dedication line inside the covers of their novels. "I dedicate this book to so and so, without whose loving care and patience I'd never been able to... bla bla bla." I will put a different line. "This book was written despite the woman I love." Today was a crisis. She tortured me with her silence and her tears, and I tortured her with my "tell me what's wrong" question. Our 'conversation' lasted for one our, during which time I was able to extract from her that *everything* was wrong, because she wasn't able to offer me anything that would take my mind away from writing. So she feels a failure. This left me speechless. Go figure. |
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