Return of …… Me!

Well.  Having a baby and being a mom sure screws with your writing schedule.  I have tried everything I could think of to still fit it in, but despite that my time writing novels, fanfiction, and playing video games has been drastically reduced.  I tried that Novel in a Year book, but honestly it moved too slow and I didn't feel it gave any actual good book-writing advice.  So I went to Writer's Digest.com and browsed around there.  Copied and pasted some good articles to my computer for refreshers and motivation.  Then I saw their recommended books for various subjects and one caught my eye.  Book in a Month by Victoria Lynn .  It includes worksheets within the book to fill out and everything.  So I began that the first of August.  I am still not quite keeping up with the book's schedule, honestly, it is murderous, but so lovely and necessary!  I am just so tired of saying over and over, how many times now, that I've had enough and was really going to work on the novels now, only to come back three years later and realize I was really no further to accomplishing my goal.  I'm just tired of it.  So I bought that book, bound and determined that no matter what it took I would finish a damn rough draft in thrity days.  Well, I am two weeks behind schedule right now, about to be three.  But I am not really too angry about it, because I have been working much harder on writing that I have in so many years, and on a consistant basis.  This lady has a degree in psychology as well, so she really knows how to motivate you and pick apart your brain in the ways you might be sabatoging yourself.  Then she has you fill out a whole lot of questions before you even get to your book, so that you know exactly who you are as a writer and what is most important to you and what you want to convey in your stories.  She made the excellent point that if you don't write about something you are passionate about, you will never have the enthusiam you need to work with that one project for the years it could take to get it published.  And that is so true.  Just look at my unfinished fanfics.  😛  No passion for the subject anymore means no writing, or being in agony when you finally force yourself to write it.  Not pleasant.  She makes you outline your story too, which I hate to do and honestly have never really done.  DAMN was it HARD AS HELL.  I sweated through those worksheets chewing off all my fingernails, racking my brain.  But it is amazing how much easier it has made the writing process.  Not to mention so much more concise.  I don't find myself wondering all over the place when I write now, because I have a direction in which to aim.  It is truly incredible.  Probably the best investment I have made in a long time, that book.  I am supposed to be starting on Act 3 this week, the final section of the book, but instead I am just getting to the end of Act One.  Still, just the thought that I am even almost done with a quarter of the book is just mind boggling to me.  This is still the closest I have been to actually fiinishing a novel since the very first long story I wrote!!!  Amazing.  I did decide to do Cheetah first.  It is the one I have most fleshed out currently and I think will be the easiest to sell within in the next year or two.  I am really excited about this.  It is really late now and I need to get to bed, but I will post all the things I have done so far and when in this journal later, to document my progress.  I am also going to try to start posting word counts here as well.  One thing is for sure, even if it takes me two months instead of one, I will definitely have my rough draft done by the end of September 2011, and that is just so liberating to think about!!!  Wow, just wow!!!  😀  Sure, it's just the very first step of a ridiculously long and hard journey, but I am ever so excited to finally be heading out the door!!!  WHOOHOO!