I've decided to write a novel. I've always broken the world down into those who know what the act of writing is about, and those who don't. I hate to call myself a writer, but I will, because I've never really committed myself to completing a project of any real substance. Recently though, as my life settles down a bit, that creeping thing called unease has coiled around me. It's insidious. I've got nothing to complain about; I've got a beautiful woman, a job that pays well, and a nice house to go home to. Maybe we'll call it a quarter-life crisis. I don't really have an explanation, but I've been thirsty for a large scale creative endeavor lately. The dissatisfaction of not engaging in those skills I claim to have has been eating away at me.
So Amanda and I sat down and created a system of helping each other accomplish our goals. I make sure she makes it out the door to pilates twice a week, and she makes sure I'm sitting at my computer working on this novel while she's gone. That's how it started; twice a week. I spent a month of twice-weekly writing sessions outlining this story. I really tried, for the first time, to think of my writing as a project that needed to be built from the foundations up. In other words, I decided to approach it like one of my buildings (I'm an architect). In the past I felt successful as a writer because I could open up a blank document and belch out a couple thousand words on some clever idea without much trouble. I could look back at that snippet of prose and be proud of how well it was written. I'd take great care to choose the right words and inject some attitude into it. But, as I sit here now, I look back at a folder on my hard drive that is full of abandoned snippets and nothing more. So standing back and actually planning how I'd tackle this story was a new experience. After a month of outlining I had a mountain of ideas, characters, locations, scenes, plots, and mythology jotted down unorganized in a Google document.
I started to feel like this was really a project, something I could accomplish bit by bit as long as I was patient. I began to dream about new ideas, writing them down first thing in the morning. Then I decided twice a week wasn't enough. I'm an early riser, so I started bringing my laptop into the kitchen with me at 6am, writing as the house slowly wakes instead of reading.
Another two weeks goes by. I've got a meaty document outlining the better part of a novel. But more importantly I had a beat-by-beat timeline of the first few scenes. When I got to that point, I realized I had to actually commit something to paper sooner or later. I saw Amanda out the door one evening, yoga mat thrown over her shoulder, and I sat down to a blank screen.
To my surprise, it flowed. I wrote, "Feast awoke unchained, and this surprised him". All the work I'd put into outlining paid off. I wrote the entire opening scene in one sitting. And it felt really damned good.
So what the hell is the blog about? Well, I'm going to sound off on my writing activity each day. Maybe just a blurb about how successful/unsuccessful the morning session was. Maybe something larger concerning a scene I'm trying to pin down.
As I write this, I'm approximately twenty thousand words into the story. These initial chapters are being reviewed and edited by myself and a group of close friends. Once I'm confident with them, I'll post them here for anyone to read. The thought is that eventually I'll start posting my progress week by week, showing my process as I go back and forth, hopefully always moving forward.
As I begin to build this blog, I'll start with some posts about the story and its inception.
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