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Storytelling is a talent passed down through the generations in my family. It is a way of life in that the more you live, the better the story; the deeper the experience, the broader the plain to connect with readers. Just like life is about people so writing is about people - about their love, their loss, their triumphs, their failures, and their x ever after. I write to understand myself and make sense of life. I share my work in order to find others who can relate to my characters, or their lives, or the moral of the story.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Shadow Legacy (working title) and goal setting


Listening to: Evanescence - Lose Control
Reading: The Forbidden Game - L.J. Smith


I have a completed manuscript of 39,692 words with an actual beginning, middle, and end, that has been nagging me for a revision for a long time now. The versions I have of it on my computer say that it was created in 2007, but I'm pretty certain that I wrote it sometime between 2005-2006. The original draft on my computer back in South Africa will probably have the more accurate date for when I finished it.

It took me an entire week to write it from the first to the last word. Can I write a book in a week again now? Heck no! I was young, I had no job, I wasn't going to college, I was going through an anti-social stage (what writer doesn't?) and I had no other responsibilities to contend with. Well... I probably did but I can't remember what.

What I do remember is having my muse chain me to my computer until I was done. I really did live in my room for that week. I was up at 6am, typing away the entire day, taking only the necessary breaks to the bathroom when I absolutely had to. I think I even ate my food with one hand and typed with the other that week. And sleep? Sleep was non-existent. I would force myself to turn in at midnight, and I'd be lying in bed with my eyes closed, going over the plot and the characters in my mind, and 'dreaming' about what was going to happen next and how that would affect the course of the story. I'm sure I drifted, but when I was awake, I was plotting. That's where my saying 'I don't sleep, I plot' stems from. And I'd be up again at 6am, typing like a mamba.

I had that urge of intrigue; I was so wrapped up in this world I've created, even when I wasn't writing it I was definitely thinking about it, and I had that insatiable compulsion to get back to it. Nothing else mattered. Everything else was insignificant in comparison. I just wanted to stay lost in the story. It was kind of like the feeling you have when you pick up one of those books that you just can not put down until you've finished it, only it was coming from the writer side of things.

I also remember how completely bushed I was on Sunday afternoon, when I finished writing the ending. I had lunch with my family, I washed the dishes and thought about how well the story had run, and then I passed out on my bed. I felt very much accomplished.

I still do, in a sense. The upside is: I have a completed manuscript!!!
The reality is: I have a completed manuscript. I have a story that's too short to be a novel, that needs to become a novel. The reality is that I have a lot of work ahead of me.

My ultimate goal is to polish it as best I can before starting the query process. But I'm taking it in baby steps. So my first goal is to schedule writing into my daily routine and then to maintain that routine.
Once I can achieve that, I can worry about the next goal.



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