Field Notes

August Writing Challenge: 8/17
Daily Word Goal: ~2,000
Word Count: 1,844
Total: 7,625

I was just shy of my goal for this day because I got really sleepy. Turns out, when I'm alternating errands and writing, it makes for a very full day. I stopped writing Mr. Goodman's journal, because in looking over all of my outline material, I didn't actually plan out the plot points his journal would reveal. And ... I have a pretty good handle on it, but I guess I was feeling inspired to work on something else. I want to just spend some time assessing where I'm at with his journal, and then go back and fill in the rest.

I'm really happy that I've been able to incorporate some of the folktales I learned about from "Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers" - I think it lends a much more interesting texture to the work. I think for the monster, I will need to go back and rewrite to bring together local Lake Superior mythology and H.P. Lovecraft's quasi-religious science fiction. I'm getting a much clearer picture of what the second draft looks like, and I'm eager to start tearing apart this awful first draft.

Anyway, there's kind of a lot going on in my (non-writing) life, but this is a welcome distraction. I've got some thinking to do, working through some stuff. My capacity to deal with other people's bullshit is waning. I need to be more creative, I need to keep up with my writing. It's one way I can stay in touch with my own inner sanctum.

I'm actually (a little bit) proud of some stuff that I wrote on Sunday, so I'll post an excerpt (not the whole thing - the pacing's way off for the rest of the scene). Ugh. Just post it already.

( Excerpt: the first storm of the winter )

August Writing Challenge: Second Weekend
Daily Goal: ~2,000 words
Words: 1,012

I actually started typing up this day earlier in the week, but since I didn't finish typing all the sessions, I didn't get a chance to post.

Ugh. This is why I never read drafts that I'm in the middle of. I'm trying not to let myself feel terribly frustrated and disheartened. Of course my writing isn't as good as the books I'm always reading. Of COURSE it's rough, and the prose is stifled, and the dialogue is cheesy. It's in my writing style. What I'm trying to do now is get everything down, so that I can go back and pretty much re-write everything. I need to get the sequence of events down before I can make it beautiful.

So ... this draft is so incredibly rough I'm a little embarrassed to post anything. The good news is, that I'm writing in Mr. Goodman's journal, and so handwriting these entries in particular makes them seem ... more believable. I have a sense of how much the writing takes up on a page of a notebook. But that also means the paragraphs are dramatically shorter than they are when I'm typing.

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.

Well, I only have one more days' worth of fiction to type up, and then I can go back to a world where I blissfully ignore how terrible my draft is. Hoping to get 2,000 new words down today, as well as finish typing all of this up.