One Month

It's 11:23pm and in just over half an hour, it'll be one month exactly until the writing conference. Deadline is looming and I've spent the entire weekend staring at the massive amounts of editing I now have to do and the possibility of a complete rewrite of my first chapter. Just the IDEA of rewriting chapter one and taking out what I always saw as a key scene to the past of one of my main characters is heart-breaking but staring at the screen to actually change it left me with a migraine that kept me in bed all day today.

I. Hate. Stress.

So, in saying all of that, I'm admitting to all of my wonderful friends here that I have not written a single word in over a week. Not. One. Nothing at all since Kansas City. I have let myself get stressed and overwhelmed once again and I lost my focus. Now, it's only a month before I'm supposed to pitch a finished product to agents, and the odds of being where I need to be are dwindling by the day. That thought is letting the doubt creep in even further.

Couple that with the fact that all of the sudden my characters for the book I was trying to focus on are being eerily quiet when I need them to tell me this story, and I'm all out of motivation on this one. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the main character of Book 2 is starting to stir in my mind and bringing her story back out of the box a little. It won't help me for the conference because I'm nowhere near where I need to be to pitch Book 2 instead of Book 3 but at least if someone is talking in my head I can get somewhere with my writing... if that makes sense.

One month. Four weeks. Thirty days. If I write one thousand words a day, which is my daily goal, that's another 30,000 words before I go. That would put Book 3 at over 60,000. The question is, can I find my focus and swim through the muddy waters of my characters thoughts to get there?

Number One

So this will officially be my first post. Makes sense to start a blog at the beginning of a journey like this, although the journey actually began years ago with the idea...

Writing is fun, sharing that writing is a scary concept and I'm nowhere near at the point that I'm about to do it yet. Hopefully, this blog and the time it takes me to write my story, the one I hope will be a book someday, will help me find that courage.

So, this is my online journal. It will show my journey to the world. Triumphs and failures laid out on the table.

Today... well, today is still TBD but yesterday was a triumph. The first day I set an official writing goal for myself and I surpassed it. Almost doubled it, actually. But so far today has been struggle. I was attempting to writing this piece (I'll refer to it as MC for future reference) in third person because I know in later stories I hope to have more than just one POV. It's not working out so well for me. I relate better to characters when I write in first person, just as I do when I read.

So, I'm giving in. At least for now, MC will be first person in the POV of my female protagonist.

And in looking at the journal post, I see that I use the word "so" far too much at the start of paragraphs...

So, I'll be doing so research for a new word to use in place of "so."

Hope everyone has a good weekend!