The Fountain Pen

I was lucky last night; at least that is how I look at it. My wife’s car needed some work done on it, so we took it over to my parent’s place as it is better suited for work (our drive way is sloped, and I’d rather not trust an emergency brake with my life). I knew last night would be a hard night for writing; my parents are friendly people and we get along well enough that we usually miss our intended departure because we are engaged in conversation. Last night was not much different, with the exception of my ability to show off my writing software to my mother (who writes), and that they left me alone for about an hour so I could try to hack out something, and that is where I got lucky.

I dodged a bullet, but it grazed me. My writing time was divided last night. I planned my story some on the way to my parent’s house, spent some time writing while I was there (thank goodness I have some really good headphones), and had to wait until I was in bed before I could pick up again. I have never worked in such spurts, and I felt certain I would fail to meet either of my goals (either 2,000 words for the night or 6,000 words total). I don’t know how I did it, and I am a little proud of myself, but I managed to make it to 6,000 words before I went to sleep; I was grazed by that bullet in that I worked longer than I should have and did not finish until Midnight (I am drinking tea this morning!).

Characters

I ran into an interesting situation last night, one I am not sure how readers (or editors) will react. I hope that I can state, without sounding mentally ill, that I talk to myself from time-to-time. My main characters takes after me in this regard and is one who would think things through by having a mental dialog with himself. The quandary lies with showing the reader the thought process of my protagonist without sounding too awkward. There are times that I will just narrate that he thought of something, but as I found last night, it seemed completely uninteresting to just state that, so I decided to have my character spill his thoughts upon the page in a sort of dialog with himself. This is one thing I have not heard anything about from other authors or from writing teachers, and I cannot recall reading anything similar either. I could be violating some “rule”, but I decided it is far more interesting to show my audience (will I actually have one I wonder?) what is going on in the troubled mind of my character rather than just tell them his mind is troubled. (If you’d like to chime in your opinion on this, feel free to leave a comment.)

Tense

One thing I recall I have been instructed on over and over again is to maintain a consistent tense. I should not interweave past, present, and future tenses in the same scene, or so I am told, and I fear that is one of my weaknesses. As I was writing last night I realized I most probably have mixed my tenses as I have been attempting to close my first chapter (I almost pity my readers, for my first chapter will probably be around 8,000 words). I know that I will need to carefully re-read my story, when I am done, and fix this little mess I am leaving for myself. I could try to catch it as I write, but I think I’d rather get my word count done than spend time making sure my grammar and my structure are sound. No one said I need to have a finished ready-to-publish “novel” by the end of November, just 50,000 words. :)

One last thing, I managed to come up with a “side” quest help fill in that early hole I was facing. Since I did not reach it yet and I have begun to fill it in I am quite happy!