Hooplah.Org

Sometimes you’ve got to take matters into your own hands.

I had great plans for this morning. The weather is finally getting nice, lingering in the mid 80s, and I wanted to take advantage of the morning light by sitting out on the balcony with my laptop. So that I could finally write in peace, with no coworkers selling accounts in the background, no gaming banter through a vent server, or having the TV turned on at full blast right in front of me while I’m obviously trying to read and concentrate. No interruptions. Just me and my thoughts.

Instead, I woke up this morning to find that my lap top trey was already monopolized because a certain someone’s work is more important than my projects. He might make more money than me and everything, and it does really suck to work on a Saturday, but I was really looking forward to my morning writing escape. Like, waiting-for-it-all-week kind of looking forward to it.

Sure, I could go out there without a trey, balancing the laptop on my legs, but that would be extremely uncomfortable… and warm. Our apartment is east-facing, and a hot laptop in my lap would only make the Phoenix sun that much more scorching.

So, here’s where I take matters into my own hands. I grabbed my laptop, a TV try, and headed to the only other “room” in our small apartment – the bedroom. I’m currently sitting on the bed, indian-style, with the lap top in front of me and the door closed. Er, well, it was closed, until he peeked his head in to see what I was doing and then didn’t close it on his way out. Damnit. I think I’ll continue to sit here, if nothing than but on principle alone. At least I can’t hear the TV in here… that much.

This arrangement isn’t so bad, really. At least I can have the overhead fan. Air circulation is one of sweet the joys in life I don’t get to have very often.

I have been writing again. It’s been more than a year since I started to try to write my book, and after a valiant effort last spring, I eventually took a long hiatus during the summer and winter because I became so frustrated that… well, that I just couldn’t write very well. I tried and tried, and probably tried too hard, but no matter what I did I felt like I was only embarrassing myself. I knew I was trying to “wing it”, so to speak, having absolutely no writing background (except for this site), or even being that much of an avid reader myself. I knew that I’d be learning along the way, but it became more and more apparent that I wasn’t progressing. If anything, I was only perfecting my failure.

I never stopped thinking of my story, though. In the car, during idle minutes at work, while playing one of my silly computer games… the characters were alive in my head, still living their lives during the time that the book was to take place. My home down, present day, but set against my own memories of high school. It was all still there, and I never once stopped thinking of the possibilities of what could happen. I just had lost the motivation to actually write it all out.

Then, about four months ago, I started reading through the books in my minuscule library. I read through the Twilight series again, and all seven of the Harry Potter books. Partly because it was the holidays and it was seriously slow at work, and partly because I just wanted to see how other authors did it. These were books I loved, and I enjoyed reading them even for a second time (and a third time, in certain cases).

It’s not like writing a book seemed that hard to do, really – I like writing. I always have. So what is it that keeps stopping me? Why did I have to feel like I had to try so hard to write a book, even though I knew in doing so that I was killing my entire effort? Writing is best when it feels effortless, when it flows, but there I was, thinking I had to strain myself to a sweat in order to get the same results as these other authors. Why? Why couldn’t their ease and confidence rub off on me?

I began to read other books – the Vampire Academy series, especially – and these novels were a bit of an eye opener for me. They weren’t written in the same “voice” as the other books I had been reading. They were casual and downright snarky, which, when I thought about it, is exactly how I used to write in this journal. Years ago, when I didn’t really give a damn about what anyone thought of HOW I wrote but WHAT I had to say, back then, the writing flowed naturally. It certainly wasn’t perfect writing by any means, but it wasn’t a struggle. I wrote with my voice, not with the voice I thought others wanted me to have.

So, with that new found concept of “writing my way”, I started out slow… I began to carry around a notepad with me, jotting down ideas. I managed to flesh out my plot in a way that had been unreachable a year ago, and last week I finally began to type it out in story form. And I tried, I really did, and once again I found I was trying too hard. It’s like I would write through a few scenes, maybe half a chapter, and then I just could not continue without rereading what I had just wrote… and I would begin edit, edit, and edit some more, to the point where I was hating everything again and wondering why I bothered. Why did I keep doing this? Why did I seem so dead set on sabotaging myself?

I had only been trying for a week and I was at the end of my rope again, ready to take another 6+ month break to lick the wounds on my confidence, when I forwarded a 3 page sample of my writing to my dear friend Sandy. She was supportive, as always, and it did make me hopeful. She wouldn’t lie to me, I knew, but why couldn’t I see it the same way she did? What was wrong with my perspective?

I began reading articles on writing, but they weren’t really helping. And that’s not to say that the information was bad, or that the people were misinformed – that certainly wasn’t the problem. It’s just that, as with most everything I’m interested in, all the tips and tricks I was reading seemed like common sense to me. I mean, really, there are people who don’t know how to develop a character? Or how to write an outline? I mean, sure, I was reading these articles looking for advise, but they weren’t telling me anything that I couldn’t have figured out for myself. None of them were giving me the answers I needed, and I supposed that’s because I didn’t know what question I needed to ask.

Then, yesterday morning, I was reading yet another article on how to write a fantasy novel. I happened to like the author of this guide a little more than the others, mostly because I have been using his software (yWriter) for the past year. His advise wasn’t any different than the next guy’s, really, but it was interesting to see his take on it.

Just when I had had my fill and was about to move on to the next article on my list, I stumbled across this section, half way down the page:

“Keep writing! Don’t get too attached to a particular story or to your very first novel. Trust me, however good it is your writing will continue to improve the more you produce. They reckon you have to write a million words of fiction before all the pieces fall into place. How much have you done?“

And I stopped. That was a pretty good question – how much writing have I done? Fiction or not, where did I think the numbers were? I thought of this website, I thought of all the poetry I wrote years ago, the few short stories, and my efforts toward my novel last year… and good god, I’ve written alot. Millions upon millions of words, all out of the joy of just writing to write. Fiction or not, that has to count or something, right?

And I supposed it did, because with that mindset, I sat down and wrote nearly 3000 words yesterday. And best of all, it’s the beginning of the first chapter, the introduction to my story, and writing that has been the bane of my existence for the last year. I had so many ideas in my head, but without a starting point, they seemed lost. Now it feels like it might all click into place.

I allowed myself ONE edit last night, and that’s all I’m going to do. From now on, it’s on and upwards. I’ll finally take some of that common sense advise and write first, edit later. I just need to get this story out of my head before I go insane, and THEN working on editing. I can do this. I’ve written millions of words before – a 100,000 more should be a piece of delicious I-told-you-I-could-do-it cake.