Sunday, January 31, 2010

Struggle and Expansion

I struggled with last week’s story for days. I went through at least four different drafts before I got it heading in a direction I thought might work.

For the second week in a row I was writing a story that started out as a dream. The difference is that A Pig Gets His Day flowed out of me with no hesitation. Unconscious Blindness however was so crystal clear in my head but I could not for the life figure out how to transcribe that clarity into a coherent story. It was absolutely infuriating. So even after working with it every single day for a week and going through multiple drafts, I still didn’t get what I wanted from it, but it was close.

I think however that I’m getting better at containing the stories instead of starting unwieldy novels in such a short period of time, which feels pretty good. And I think I’m playing with the flow of language and story progression a bit, which is pretty fun. And I think the characters I’m coming up with are fairly clear and fun to read about.

But I seem to be drawn to writing stories that exist in a genre that I don’t really read. So I’m working hard to expand my reading to encompass more sci-fi/fantasy and mystery/suspense books in an effort to get some insight into story flow and character development within those genres. And the biggest thing, I think, is that I just need practice. So it’s a good thing I’ve got 48 more weeks with this project, if nothing else, at the end I’ll be vastly better read.

So, if you have recommendations for me for books to read, bring them on!!

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