Sweet Beans - I Did It!!!

My very rough draft is complete! Please note that 'very' is italisized. There's a reason for that, trust me.

There are still a lot of words to be found & written. One, possibly two, subplots waiting to be woven. And boney characters that need some meat on their personalities. Not to mention the multiple rewrites that authors do to their manuscripts.

But I've discovered some things about my author self.

1. I have to be able to hear the main character's voice before I can begin writing. There are a couple of ways I have done this in the past- character interviews and freewrites. In crazy author lingo - I have to be able to feel the main character.

2. I need to have come up with three main scenes. One for the opening, one for the messy middle, and one for the end. However, if the character decides that they don't want to go down the path that would lead them to the next oultined scene I don't force them.

3. I write very short and bare in my rough draft. As I was writing I had scenes where I knew I needed deeper exploration. But I let it be. Instead, leaving myself notes of thoughts I had.

Writing the climax of my novel was fun and surprising for me. Because of my vague outline I thought I knew who my bad guy was and who my good guy was. But - SURPRISE! - my bad guy was actually the good guy and the good guy was actually the bad guy. It was a fun twist that I hadn't expected.

Do your characters ever surprise you? Do you like it when they do or would you rather they just did what you'd outlined?

Weekly Word Goal was - 4800
Words I Wrote - 5211

This post feels lame to me. I'm chalking it up to brain deadness and sleep deprivation. Sorry.

Meeting My Characters

Meeting new people is not my forte. I get all insecure and even making small talk becomes as difficult as say - I don't know - holding my breath for three minutes.

Maybe that's why interviewing my characters is so much fun. I can skip the small talk and go straight for the hard questions.

Me - "So (insert character's name here), tell me about some of your childhood issues."

Character - "When I was nine I invited a bunch of girls over to have a sleepover. My parents had just bought a new VCR. Well, one of the girls (who I didn't like very much anyway. I don't know why I invited her) stuck a popcorn kernal inside the VCR. My parents were furious and got mad at the girl. I felt bad that she had ruined the VCR. But more than that I was embarrassed that my parents got mad at her. So now, years later, I don't like to have people over to hang out. I mean, you never know what could happen."

Me - "Wow. Umm, don't you think that's a little weird that you still don't like to have people over. I really doubt a 16 year old is going to shove popcorn into your VCR."

Character - *whispering* "You never know..."

Yeah, interviewing characters is much more fun. Especially paranoid ones.

What do you do to get to know your charaters better?

Becoming An Author Each Day

"We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day."

-Richard G. Scott


Yeah, I kinda suck at that. You know, the whole actually doing what we need to so we become what we want to EACH day.

Wow, that felt very irreverent to put the word 'suck' in the same post as a Richard G. Scott quote. But there's no other word that I can think of to describe just how horrible I am at doing something EACH day.

I know of published writers who consistently write each day (weekends, holidays, and birthdays included). And then there are others that write in large spurts after seasons of drouts. Obviously, it works both ways.

With me I've noticed that if I write every day I think about my book more throughout the day, and I'm excited to write again the next day. But if I don't write every day then writing becomes a chore.

Jeni, in my critique group, gave me the great idea of having a weekly word goal. So, on those crazy days when you only have time to maybe write a paragraph (and that's pushing it) you are still reaching for a goal that week.

My goal this week is 3500. I have 1482 already written.

What are your goals that you are working on (writing or not). And how do you work at attaining them?