Day 18

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

18 Aug 2015

Trying to get serious about this now (although I’ve been trying for a while now, but…) with regular schedule and a greater amount of effort/time. Three hours solid & in a day is the record so far! Also about 2K words in 3 hours seems to be an average pace for first drafts.

It’s hard not to immediately start in on rewrites of existing work when I look at it… so much opportunity (need!) to expand, layer, deepen.

Cole snapped from an idea into a character for me last week, and that’s really providing the impetus to move forward now. I’m writing in first person present in her voice, which feels pretty good, as I get to track along with her and experience the story firsthand.

However, I kind of feel it’s not very sustainable… I keep slipping into past tense and struggling with keeping verbs in the right form. It does lend a sense of immediacy, but I wonder if it will read as too self indulgent or juvenile?

Also, I had been planning to put the ‘dreams’ in first person present and write the rest of it in third to set them apart, so I lose that angle… I think there will be third person (present? past?) sections where action goes on outside of Cole’s experience, although I feel like I’ve been told that breaks some sort of writing rule. Pretty sure I’ve seen other authors do it though.

Still very distracted by the desire to start sharing this work too early and building a following (prima donna much?!), and also by the pressure to start back in on moving forward with life plans… training, work, moving to Scotland…

Which is maybe good, since it pushes me to get a move on with this piece.

Tuesday

Start Time: 10:15 am

Location: bedroom

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