Writing Journal January 26-29

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Today I gathered my story notes into one document to read through so I can really get myself back into my story world.  Six pages.  That's it!  Almost 60,000 words, and only six pages of notes. It's really kind of cool, isn't it?

Getting the notes together was really useful on a few levels.  First, I get the gist of the story in a very small space, and that lets me get a good overview of what I've written so far without having to reread everything.  Best of all, though, I can see now why I've been having trouble wrapping up the scene I've been poking at since December.  I don't have any notes at all on it.  I'm not sure what needs to happen, and I haven't taken the time to do any free writing and note taking about it.  Friday is going to be all about getting my head around that scene so I can finally finish it out and move on to Act II.  I'm also going to do some Act II planning tomorrow so when I finish the current scene I won't find myself stuck again because I have too many options and ideas swirling around.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Today I ended up writing the first scene of a new story.  It seems to be a paranormal YA story, and the scene came to me so suddenly and strongly that I had to stop what I was doing and go to the computer to write it all down.  It seems to have calmed down enough to let me do other things now that I have that part written, but this may end up being what I work on after Ordinary Girl, because I can feel these characters doing things in the back of my head, so they may insist on some attention when I have it to give.  I also got in a good chunk of journal writing today.  It was nice to get some of my thoughts and ideas sorted.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

I didn't do any writing today, not even journaling.  I think that's okay, actually.  I was going to do some journaling this evening, but my heart wasn't in it, so I gave myself permission to have a day off.

Sunday, January 29, 2012 

Some journaling early-ish in the day led to some good information about my writing life.  I noted that when I was a fairly regular and prolific writer (even though I was still plagued with that habit of not finishing longer works), I was also doing writing practice pretty much every day.  I wrote in my journal, sometimes for hours on end, in addition to writing stories.  I also wrote papers for my literature classes, and that's something I may look at doing on my own just to dust off those skills.  I wrote lots of what my friend Megan and I used to call "things."  They weren't poems, but they weren't stories, but they also weren't exactly essays.  They had elements of poetry and fiction but were quite short and more narrative and more essay-like.  I also wrote poetry.  And then there was the reading.  Back then I was reading way more than I've been making room for lately.  Lots of novels, of course, but also short stories, poetry, and books and stories for my classes that I might not have picked up on my own.  So I'm doing a bit of reworking of my writing goals and of my writing life.  I have a strong feeling this is going to be really helpful, so I'm excited to get started and see how things go.