A Chance to Persevere?
Progress
This was a very hard night, and I hope to have learned a few things (though I wonder … ). To start it all off, I was too tired to really concentrate, and I had to force myself to develop my story. Instead of surfing the ‘Net I shut everything down except my IM application and my writing software. This forced me into dealing with my plot and story. This proved valuable, for while I did not make staggering progress tonight I made progress, which is more than I thought I would do. So:
• Lesson One: Make time for writing, and use it only for writing, especially if I don’t feel like writing.
Instead of really tearing into my plot and adding lots of interesting points I found myself organizing my outline. I started grouping things together in movements and sections (I still need to work on actual scenes, but I think I got a fair start) and identifying the areas where I want more plot points. I even gave myself a section for “unsorted” plot points for things I know I want to happen, but I don’t know where. This all proved helpful for it allowed me to see my story in terms of larger strokes (previously I had it grouped under “Beginning, Middle, and End” just to start) that made sense, and adding the unsorted events already proved helpful as it allowed me to flesh out an idea and place it already! So:
• Lesson Two: Organizing my outline; it will allow me to get a better handle on my story and compartmentalize the movements and discrete units.
Stuck
The third thing which continues to be painfully clear to me (and is one of the sources of my “stuckness”) is my struggle to name things. I have to come up with names for people, names for places, names for kingdoms, names for legends, names for creatures, names for races … and I have a hard enough time picking a nickname for myself to use when chatting on the ‘Net! I’ve used name generators in the past, and those are okay, but there is still the struggle to pick a name that seems to fit the item (either by the sound or the meaning, or *gasp* both).
My only other point of “stuckness” is finding things for my hero(s) to do. I don’t want it to be a boring book (obviously) and I don’t want things to go by too quickly, and I like books that have little side plots that eventually tie into the whole in a way that few could predict. I imagine such complexities are beyond a 30 day deadline, but I still hope to have a tribute to such delights, perhaps editing after the fact to make it more full.
(As an aside: daglo got to see my outline as it stood tonight and he is convinced I have something close to 300,000 words worth of movements, while I can only see 20,000 words worth of points. I hope he is more right than I am.)