Wow, it's been two weeks

I'm still here, still writing, still invested in this blog. But quite a few things have been happening lately that's made this whole writing a book thing less of a dedicated goal and more of a side thing that gets worked on when it gets worked on.

School started up for the spring semester last week, which is of course going to take up quite a bit of time from now on. But I'm working hard to get ahead of my school work so I don't end up overwhelmed.

To be honest, however, it hasn't simply been lack of time that's interrupted my writing and interest in this blog. Unfortunately, a very loved family member has been very sick and the news is not good. So it's been an emotionally taxing time, and frankly, I just haven't had the excitement and interest in writing in the face of that.

But I am still invested in this goal, and my writing, as well as updating this blog, will continue.

The First Sneak Preview – A (Very) Brief Character Q&A

I’ve had this link bookmarked for a while, but when cleaning out my old bookmarks to get everything ready to transfer to my new computer, I ended up deleting it.

Gotham Writers Workshop Character Questionnaires

It is a list of questions to ask yourself about your characters to get a better grasp of who they are. It has a number of questions ranging from the basic (What’s your character’s name?) to more in-depth (Does she have a secret?), to a little off the wall but surprisingly insightful (as you will see below).

I’ve been working slowly through the questions and thought it would be neat to post some of them. Today there’s only one, I’d like to make posts like this a regular feature of this blog, so expect more soon.

I’ve been thinking of creating my own list of interview questions for my characters, and I think it would be fun to post them to give everyone (including myself) an insight to the characters I’m creating. Maybe it will spark people’s interest. It would also be really fun to have others who are writing a book comment with their answers as well.

With that out of the way, on to the reason for the post: 

Today’s character is The Heroine, and the question is “Where would you like to live?”

Day 2 Comes to a Close

So, there's 15 minutes left of day 2 and I can't say I've actually written anything. Boo. But that's ok, because there's more to writing a book than just sitting down and writing. You need to have some idea as to what you're writing about.

I actually do have some idea as to what I want to write. I'm really not just throwing myself into this blindly, despite what it may seem like. I've wanted to write a book for years. I have been writing since I could write; I have more ideas and plots and characters in my head than I know what to do with.

So today I've been sort of working on solidifying some of the concepts I have into a concrete story. I haven't yet completely worked through them and written things down (I'm going to start that as soon as I finish this), but actually getting things in order in my head is, for me, a really big deal.

Depending on how this goes, I may make another post later or tomorrow. I have this idea of maybe making posts every so often about the plot and characters I'm creating - maybe profiles or snippets or something - but I'm not sure yet.

I'd like to make this a blog that follows not only my work in writing a book, but in how the book itself comes together.

Blog Update

I haven't sat down to write yet today, but I will be soon.

I have, however, had some time to tinker around with the blog. I like the changes I've made, though whether or not anyone else does is yet to be seen. I suppose I need to actually get some people to read it first before I can poll them.

I added lables to the posts, rearranged the page nav, added some ads (yeah, sorry), and fiddled with the color scheme.

More to come later.

Day 1

It's unlikely I'll be making a post here everyday, but it's only day one and I've still got some momentum left. Today was a sort of busy day and I didn't have much time to write (honestly, I just sat down to write about an hour ago), but I did manage to get a couple paragraphs written.

249 words down, 79,751 words to go.

Go me.

I don't really have any daily or weekly goals. I know it will take roughly 220 words per day to make my goal of 80,000, but I think it's pretty unlikely I'll be able to write every day and I don't want to discourage myself by making goals that I won't be able to keep. I'll just have to make up for the non-writing days with more productive days.

But with that said, 249 words is more than 220, which means I am currently on track.

Day 1 is officially a success.