I did it.....I did it....I did it! Did I mention that I did it? Oh, okay. Might of blacked out for a minute there. I wrote my first page! ::brief pause while some extremely bad dancing commences around my living room, out onto the porch and into my neighbor's yard:: ::another brief pause while I convince said neighbor not to call the police::
I realize one page isn't a lot but it's a start. And thanks to the helpful advice from my blog readers (and since there's only three, you know who you are), I conquered my fear of that hateful, smug, blank page and marked it up but good. *sigh* I finally have a writing breakthrough and my grammar goes all to hell. Oh well, can't have everything.
At least now I have my starting point. It's weird how a single page can free you (or at least me) to feel like it's actually possible to write the rest of the book. I know there will be more problems to come. Definitely more hand wringing and embarrassing self pity with much wailing to the heavens. But these too shall pass. They always do, one crisis at a time. For now, I say let the celebration continue.
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7 comments:
Yay! Now that you have your first page, ONWARD TO THE END!
No pressure, right? :-)
And I've been meaning to ask you, after reading your worldbuilding post awhile back — is this new novel science fiction? Or do you do worldbuilding for every book, no matter what genre?
The new book is a paranormal romance. Part of it is set in another world that exists in conjuction with ours. I've honestly never done worldbuilding for my other manuscripts, but looking back I think I should have. No matter what genre an author writes, he/she is creating a world around their characters, at least IMO. This is definitely something I will incorporate into my writing from now on, although not always on such a large scale. What about you?
I've never done the worldbuilding thing, but when I read your post a few days ago it occurred to me that maybe I should. Like you said, it's like you're creating a whole world around your characters ... and while I wouldn't categorize my WIP as a paranormal romance, it's definitely got some fantasy elements (like, uh, curses). So ... obviously I have to make it believable that there is a family that seriously believes in curses, and to that end a little worldbuilding could go a long way.
Here's the bad part: I have no idea at all how to go about doing it. When people say "worldbuilding" I picture tiny action figures and paper mache trees. :-)
It's weird how a single page can free you (or at least me) to feel like it's actually possible to write the rest of the book.
Yes, it's weird. But it feels great, doesn't it?
Now I have this horrible image of thousands of tiny GI Joes storming poor, defenseless pinatas. That's just not right.
As far as worldbuilding goes, all I can tell you is I'm still learning. This is the website I referenced in my earlier post about the subject: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm There's a lot of information there that quite honestly went straight over my head. But I did walk away with a better understanding of what makes up any world (fantasy or not) such as social and governmental structures, rules of nature that affect each world, etc.
So even if you're not building a world from the ground up, you still need to know what governs your characters and their environment. Who do they answer to in life, what's their role and how do they affect the social order around them? Even mapping out the town they live in or blueprinting their house is part of world building as far as I'm concerned. This might be elementary to other authors, but I never gave it much thought before. Maybe that's one of the reasons I have so many half-finished manuscripts.
You mentioned curses are an important part of your book. I'm assuming they're real since you said it has fantasy elements. Questions you might ask yourself (or maybe you already have): Are all curses the same? Do they come from the same source? Are they only objected oriented or can people be cursed to? How do you get rid of them? Can anyone cast them? How long do they last? Can they be carried from generation to generation?
Does that help at all?
To answer your question Steve, it's better than chocolate.
That totally helps. Thanks! Now I've got a lot of thinking to do ...
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