the emerging writer

I’ve had writing blogs before.  Two, to be exact, and neither of them lasted more than a few weeks, or even days.  Recently I was puzzling over this, mostly because they were good blogs that I’d put a lot of time and thought into creating and I posted quite frequently for the time I had them up.  My writing definitely wasn’t good, but I was blissfully ignorant of that fact back then, so that wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that I wasn’t passionate about writing.  Oh, ever so often I’d get little spurts of ‘let’s get this poem/novella/novel written and show the world I can do this’, but it never amounted to anything.  My heart simply wasn’t in it.  I knew next to nothing about writing, copied plots, characters, and more from my favorite authors (quite shamelessly, truth be told) and wrote terrible little Regency novellas.  I kind of wish I hadn’t deleted those so I could read them and see what my tween writer self was like.

I ‘participated’ in National Novel Writing Month a couple of years in a row because it seemed like the thing to do, but I never even got one word in the novels I had planned (they actually weren’t planned at all).  My characters were made of cardboard (not literally), my plots were weak copies of other plots, and I only could write about 8,000 words in a project before it petered out.  Now fast-forward about four years.  I get a couple of ideas for a ‘thrilling plot line’ and away I go, pantsing and not having a clue where the story’s going.  I quickly lose interest, and give it up.  In fact, when I lost the whole beginning of my novel, I was secretly happy because I’d realized I hated the story and I wanted to give up writing forever.  But I didn’t.  I stuck with it and got a new, much tamer idea for a novel, stuck with it this time, and actually finished the book at 75,000 words.  I was so proud of myself.  I then realized that the story wasn’t working, I’d have to totally rewrite the whole thing and rework the plot.  Not so proud now.

I hesitated for as long as I could until the story was practically throwing itself at me, telling me to start the rewriting process.  Tentatively, I did so.  And it actually went well.  I’m not done yet (far from it, actually), but that’s mostly because I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year for the first time (the other years didn’t count at all, in my opinion) and I’m winning.  I have 27,500 words right now and I see no end in sight.  The book I’m writing for NaNo – a Christian dystopian entitled I Will Repay – will probably be about 100,000 words once I’m done the first draft, but NaNo’s helping me get a good head start.  I’m happy as a writer.  I’m passionate about my work, my characters, my plotlines, and pretty much everything else related to a writer’s life.  Oh, and I also like writing because it gives me the chance to listen to epic music for hours on end.  Pretty sweet.

Over the next few weeks that remain in November, I hope to share snippets, character sketches, and plot points for I Will Repay and the books that will follow it in the trilogy.  And, of course, once November’s over, I’ll still be writing away furiously, so you’ll get a peek at my other projects as well.

Eva