Kick-Off Meeting Success
I am surprised. Despite the inevitable distractions of meeting new people and conversing with them I not only managed to reach my word count goal for the day, I exceeded it by 400 some words! I was able to write 1,000 words in the 90 minutes I was at the meeting (I had to come late) and by bedtime tonight I had exceeded my goal with ease. In fact, were it not for the fact that I want to get a good night’s sleep I would write some more. I can actually be even happier at my position tonight, because I spent at least 10 minutes looking for some names (I renamed my protagonist to Jory from Jayce). There was a point while I was looking and hunting for names that I began to panic about wasting my time, but now I see I was fine.
Revising
Tonight I had to return to what I wrote last night and add a crucial point, something I was missing: I described my protagonist. I gave a description of nearly every other character but my main one! This afforded me the opportunity to use the revisioning technology in my writing software, and so far it seems to work great (I have not tried to go back and look at my first version yet, so I don’t know how well or useful it will be). I hate revising what I wrote, because I usually like the structure of what I leave behind and I often have to rework entire paragraphs to fit in the desired (or needed) piece, and often that means I have to touch some phrase that I liked as it stood. Hopefully I will be able to manage through this as I know I will need to edit this before I let it see the light of day.
On that note, I did not write in the same quality as I did last night. I’m not sure why. It might have something to do with the mental distraction of being in a room full of other people who might at any moment ask me a question or offer a comment. Regardless I know I did not write great dialog tonight, but that’s okay, my only goal is to reach 50,000 words. I’ll make it “good” literature later.
Experimenting
I am not one for experimenting and making an already difficult task harder, but I came across an idea at work that I think I would like to employ in my novel, and one I hope will not be too difficult. I have read many books that weave two or more simultaneous treads together, alternating from one to the other. I would like to add that to my novel, so I can better develop the devious conflict the story will need. The question I will need to work out is how to add it without distracting the reader, and to know how much to reveal about the “evil machinations” to the reader while not revealing it to the characters. One thing I enjoy as a reader is discovering things along with the characters. I’m always … disappointed when I know something the characters don’t (this does not include foreshadowing).
I will work with the material some, and pass it around my head while I work and carry on about my life. I might even take my lunch breaks at work to develop this idea. I definitely think it is something that will help move the plot and help move the reader to side with our heroes, but I want to make sure I keep a careful balance and not reveal too much so as to make my story boring (okay, so I guess I not only want to reach 50,000 words but I also want a half-way interesting story to read).