Anyway, on that brighter side, I've dug myself out from the most recent avalanche of schoolwork and procrastination on schoolwork, and have decided most diplomatically to further procrastinate in the area of studying for my exams next week in order to start another posting thread on this little blog 'o mine: The A to Z Book Diary, which will serve as a sideline for keeping track of progress on getting my first novel written... partially for commiserating purposes if any other writers happen to stumble this way, but mostly to guilt myself into keeping consistent with working on said novel. We've all got to have our ways to actually get things done - hopefully things like this will get me from "aspiring" to "published", sometime before I hit my golden retirement years.
Heh, here's hoping.
As always, if anyone reading feels so inclined pop by in the comments and share some rants of your own - the more the merrier XD.
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So I've re-realized an old revelation that every writer-in-progress gets to time and time again: in the area of progressing on a potentially marketable work of fiction, I am my own worst enemy. Coming up with story ideas... not an issue. Ideas bubble up from all over the place (which is why very little homework gets done in advance of the night before due dates). Sticking with one idea consistently enough to make a novel out of it, on the other hand... yikes.
I'm not sure if this is an apprehension that goes away once you've gotten those first couple of novels out there and gained some sort of readership, but no idea seems quite good enough to be "The One" - that is, the one that feels like it's got what it takes to maybe turn into that golden goose that will get you noticed as a writer, rather than shuffled off to the bargain bin after a few months of gathering dust. And I've found that the more time goes by, the worse these apprehensions get, until rather than the creative half of my brain happily feeling like this...
Image courtesy of SalvatoreVuono/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
...it ends up feeling more like this...
Image courtesy of BoazYiftach/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In short: no good shall come of this, young grasshopper. Ouch.
But I've made my New Year's resolution early this year, and hopefully posting it here will make me keep to it. I have picked one idea for my starter-upper (one which lends itself to a potential trilogy-ish structure), and come hell or high water, I'm sticking with this one from beginning to end. Obviously wouldn't be too bright to detail the whole thing online, but in the broad sense, it's a modern fantasy-type thing, semi sci-fi-y, and falling in the Young Adult (YA) genre.
The official Resolution: this *bleeping* thing is getting written. Rants and generalized brainstorming will be posted here periodically to keep my brain from imploding in the process, and from here on in, it's going to be a page per day at minimum; screw the apprehensions - do you hear me?? I'm done with you all!! HA!!!
Anyway. To Be Continued... Stay Tuned... o_0
Write what YOU want to read. Seriously, don't worry about marketing! If it ends up that you write this thing and its a bust, so what?? We writers have tons of them, and so what if we don't end up J.K. Rowling after our first novel and idea? Sometimes our success is merely the culmination of our failures. So write what makes you feel all giddy and excited, what you would want to read yourself.
ReplyDeleteHeh, you raise a mighty fine point :P - it seems to be a bad habit of mine, jumping ahead of myself and over-thinking... well, EVERYTHING. On the plus side, the idea that I've settled on is one I'm definitely excited at the process of sinking my writing teeth into - I can picture how almost the entire thing will unfold, and page 1 is down (huzzah!). Now if I can just stop worrying about the next step, and just focus on the writing!
DeleteOh, and thanks for taking the time to come by and comment, by the way! :)
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