yesterday i decided to skip blogging because i successfully added over 1300 words (or about 5 pages double spaced 12p tmn) to the creative piece i am currently writing. on the one hand that doesn't sound like a lot (one of my prouder moments in college was successfully cranking out a 15 page, 4500 word, A- paper on Cosmology in under 10 hours) but writing fiction goes a lot more slowly for me than academic writing.
on the whole i feel a lot more secure with this piece of fiction than i have with others before it. i finally googled, "how to write a novel," only to determine that the path to doing it is both a lot harder and a lot easier than i had ever given it credit for being. i definitely excel at writing characters, but, quite frankly, i always really sucked at developing a story arch. i had it in my mind that if i fell in love with my characters hard enough, (which is a challenge since i really prefer to write about rather despicable, flawed people) they would eventually lead me to some grand adventure on their own.
but, at least at this point, i know where these characters are going and it's been a huge step forward for me. and for just shy of 2200 words total there are already a lot of characters: andrea, grace, ruby, dylan, olivia, craig, steve, patrick, sam, "blondie."
i'm toying with the idea of signing off my future blog posts with the current word count of my, what-i-eventually-hope-makes-it-to-be-a-novel-someday. to try and keep myself motivated and productive.
have any of you guys tried to write a piece of fiction over 50,000 words (who am i kidding, what about 20,000)? how do you stay motivated / productive with the same creative piece?
word count: 2,154
