Mois : novembre 2019

Diary of a writing project. Day 61: Plot twist!

Word count goal this week: 55 000 words
Word count goal so far: 35 284 words

While writing a fairly overly dramatic scene, an idea came up. Plot twist, it is a great idea!
It adds conflict, tension, it creates one more opportunity to interact with a character I thought I would have to delete.
Hooray!

But.

It means going back to the start in order to leave breadcrumbs. The new idea needs a backstory, so to speak. It needs to feel more realistic, more deeply connected to the main plot, and not out-of-the-blue, what-the-heck, how-convenient-writer filler scenes.

It is so exciting though!

Will the idea still ne that awesome tomorrow? Don’y know.
But, it’s boosting my writing motivation, so for now, it’s just a great way to kick off the writing week.
After skipping last night writing session, it feels good to be back on track and super excited about the book again.

Until tomorrow, dear writer friends…

Diary of a writing project. Day 60: In a bubble, a storm

Word count goal this week: 55 000 words
Word count goal so far: 34 139 words

New week, new hope.

Will reading a tons of tips about self-care for writers, and actually making some of those tips happens, like take a walk, eat well, changing up the writing set-up and, a personal favorite, clean up the working area and get organized help that word count reach the top?

A tons of books are hitting the shelves and the online stores these days. As a reader, I am thrill !
As a writer, I find it very discouraging.
So. Many. Books. aka: competitors.

The writing community is really friendly and all, but at the end of the day, all the authors among said community are competitors.
If not for the literary genre they write in, for readers and social media attention, for sure.

Everyone wants to grab our attention. Phones, socials medias, blogs, podcasts, compagnies, they are hunting our attention down.
Every sphere is fighting for it.
In the book world, publishers and self-published authors are battling hard to create something around the books they sell. If only they could go viral, if only they could get on that tv show, podcast, YouTube channel.
But it doesn’t stop there. In the book world, others want our attention: writer platforms (yours truly thank you for hanging around here, by the way), literary agent, freelance editors, designers, proof-reading people. More they often, every single one of them has a craft-book, an ebook or a class to promote.

Writers always had to be entrepreneurs as well. I know. They had to fight to get for reader’s and media’s attention.

But they didn’t have to fight that many attention grabber.

The book world is a bubble. Inside that bubble, all I can see now is a never-ending storm of new-new-new-better-better-better-copycat-copycat-copycat with a twist.

So, yeah, at night, in front of my writing project, it is hard to imagine how I will manage to make my book stand out in the dark, stormy book bubble…

« You only fail if you stop writing. »

I know, dear writer friends…
I know.

Diary of a writing project. Day 59: So sleepy

Work count goal this week: 47 500 words
Work count goal so far: 34 139 words

I had a crazy busy day / evening. It will all go back to normal once I’m done with the extra-work, extra-chores, somewhere next week or so.

I went back to drafting, for the little time I could spare to write today.
While doing some work, I had this super fun idea for the chapter I was working on before I started revising.
So I went on and wrote the scene.

The scene feels like a keeper. It’s emotional, dramatic, it really get the main character going and reflect on herself. Fun!

For now, it is mostly dialogue. I usually don’t suffer from « white room syndrome » (it would be quite the reverse in my case), but today I had to make haste.
The past few weeks, I’ve been waking up around 4:30-5 am, so I’m feeling sleepy around 8 pm and just crash around 9…
The evening writing time is growing shorter every day, and I don’t write a lot of words.

But I write and it makes me happy. That’s the important thing.

You only fail if you stop writing, right? Right!

Good night already, writer friends !