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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. |
| I think I am starting to get it. The feedback I am receiving at this site is priceless. Only now do I realize how tough it is to write well. I want my story to excite me... so I write, and then re-write till the words make my heartbeat quicken. Today I finished chapter 2; it took three full re-writes... and it is still a draft, of course.
Those who say it can't be done are often interrupted by someone else doing it! Unknown author |
| Still writing... now working on the second large scene. I wonder if it's actually possible to finish by July 19  My GF will be back in Japan for 3 weeks in August, and my son will be back in Russia, also for 3 weeks. I'll be alone after work! That should the break-through time. |
| The CD on fast-writing said that you can write a 400-page novel in 14 days, spending no more than 30 mins per day. I have ~170 pages of backstory (I thought I was writing the novel, but then understood that it was nothing but a backstory), and about 30 pages of the actual thing. My target is 400 pages of real stuff by July 19. Only 370 pages to go... and 21 days... with about 1 writing hour per day... hmm. I wonder. |
| One thing I realised today (oh boy, I keep forgetting that this is an American Spelling site... how many 'realise' and 'honour' and 'traveller' I had to self-correct today? lol). Anyway, one thing I realized was that a page is not complete till I've made love to it. Do you know the feeling I am talking about? You pour your emotions into the page, you caress it, you cherish it, you make love to it. Then something happens, and the page becomes alive. I had this feeling with all my short stories. I made love to all of them. And today I finally made love to my novel's opening chapter. It's still a fetus, but I hope this one will not die in a miscarriage... like the three others before it... I guess I have to stop with this analogy right here. Khm. So now it's 10.15 pm and off I go, for some writing. |
| Another day fought between the writing and the real life... I begin to question my ability to finish the novel in 4 weeks. The strain of the effort begins to show after these 5 days - a 10 hour workday followed by family life and then 'my own hour' of writing that stretches far beyond midnight... I kept falling asleep today. At any rate, I think I gotta stop polishing what I've written. There will be time for that later. As one of the writing teachers said, "you can't perfect what doesn't exist" - and my book doesn't yet exist. The comments on the opening chapter are encouraging... make me want to continue writing. I just gotta stop coming back and re-writing it based on the feedbacks  From now on, the thing is about churning out the pages. The draft outline is done, the narrator is selected, the tone is (sort of) found. |
| The search for the style continued today. A few people took a look at my yesterday's opening chapter, but not a single soul bothered to rate it. My conclusion - not interesting enough. Possibly too static; no dialogue; no action. Today I re-wrote the opening. Maybe this one seduces someone into rating and commenting:
Meanwhile, as I search for the novel's narrative voice, I continued pondering the concept and outlining. I am now more excited about my characters, after drafting them in my mind. The big change that compelled me to write today was the decision to go from the '3rd person' narration to the '1st person' narration. |
| I tested the waters tonight, producing the first text. I came home after 9 pm tonight so tired that I could not even say the sentence of "Shall we watch a movie?" to my GF without correcting myself four or five times. She had presented me with a great collection of Kurosawa classics the other day, so I do want to see them. She refused, because she was also tired. In fact, she fell asleep on our cozy thick floor mat right after dinner. She's free to use the furniture, of course - but being Japanese, she hardly cares about it. Jobs these day, eh? We collapse into coma every night, only to get up the next day, tired more than before. But a beer helped me recover my spirits, and I produced my first real text for this novel.
That's the tone I want use. What do you think? Not sure if I should laugh or cry about the result. Continued tomorrow... |
| I just read in another blog (on blogit) that according to some statistics 84% of Americans want to write a book, but only 5% of Americans read. Sheesh. I guess I'll make more money by writing a book on how to become a writer, rather then by actually writing a book. |
| Being a self-motivated self-starter that I am, I got bored with pondering the future last night and ended up writing more. So I sat down and pulled together all at least somewhat usable scenes I've ever written on this topic. I ended up with 200+ pages of text. This brought me to a challenge: decide which target audience my book would appeal to. I came up with two choices: Generic adult target audience that likes history novels. Challenge:This choice would mean serious research, serious detailed writing, and some rigidity in following the known events. Positives: I'll be able to write sex / rape / extreme violence scenes that I am so good at. Young males and some young females, 17 - 28 y.o.. Challenge: I'll have to limit the gore and sex. Positives: I can freely introduce elements of fantasy (e.g. interactions with the 'spirits' and 'gods'), I can get away with wild swings in the plot, as long as it's exciting and full of adrenaline. At the moment, my opening scenes are written as a rigid history novel with a fair deal of violence, and the scenes towards the end are more 'fantasy'. So, a struggle. |
| Tonight's update is in haiku... don't laugh too much at this turn of events. I am too tired to write today. My ex-wife's losing her job, and possibly leaving the country. Will our son go with her, or stay with me? Why did I follow her to the other end of the world, was it to face yet another country that might be empty of my son? Or will he stay with me and lose his mother? -- I stare at my screen. A bug attacks the window - Makes me shudder. |
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