Day 1

I think I could continue writing, but I have done well today and want to give things time to stew in my brain, so I have some faint idea of what to do tomorrow. Today has been a good day, I have been fairly productive. I can't say I'm happy with what I wrote, and I definitely can't say that it is good, but it is on paper. I still haven't found the style or voice for this novel yet, and that is more of the kind of writer's block I have been having. Not really the inability to write, although that has been prevalent as well, but the inability to write with a flow or a certain voice. Much of what I have written today has been awful, actually, with characters going off onto paragraphs long thought streams.

I dislike writing first person, but much of what I have done today seems to have been some odd first person-third person. It's also more telling than showing, and I don't know whether I want just the main character David to have chapters, or to spread it out. It is almost a mystery so having his younger brother, mother, or anyone else narrate at all or even be the focus of a chapter will probably ruin some of the intrigue. But to follow the No Plot? No Problem! book, I need to worry about none of that now. I am just supposed to write whatever comes into my head, and get the entire story on paper, and then I revise it and find it's voice and structure. In this exercise, it is the second step, while the first step is to mainly spew crappy writing onto the paper.

According to the book, these feelings diminish as the story takes shape, the longer you write, and it seems less haphazard and bad. I hope so.

Words Needed a Day to make 50,000: 1,667
Personal Goal: 2,000
Today's Word Count: 4, 152
Amount over Goal: 2, 152
Chapter: Still on Chapter 1
Characters Introduced: The main character, David, and one of the supporting females, Holly. Brief mention of Carolynn and Elijah, David's mother and brother. And Tramp the dog.
Stuff that happened: A whole lot of nothing, actually, other than David complaining about the weather, meeting Holly, and getting her to take him around the city so he knows some of the places to go.
Main Complaints: Listed above. A lot of internal monologuing and very little description. It flows very poorly and it makes me want to stab myself, but I must carry on. David is very slowly establishing himself, but I need to do that less with him "telling" the reader while thinking it and more through actions.
Good things: I like Holly. She exploded onto the page more fully formed than I thought she had been in my head. Hopefully she'll stay that way, because the part of the chapter with her in it moved very fast, even if I'm not too happy with it.
Quote (aka, the least bad):

“As long as you’re not some man-whore artist who just wants to add me to his list of lays, I can do that.” She shelved the last couple of books and stood up.

"No, no long list of lays for me. Unfortunately," he added as an afterthought.

Now I just need to get a vague idea of where I'm going, and figure out something to do for the rest of my night since this went fairly smoothly. I'm actually getting excited about editing it and fixing it, even though I think it will be a total mess and almost a complete rewrite. I just have to get there, though.

30 Days

Something big is in the making here at the Doormat Writer. The other day, I picked up a book called No Plot? No Problem, a "high velocity guide to writing your first draft in 30 days" out of curiosity. Turns out it is written by the guy that founded National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which takes place every November. I'm planning on doing NaNoWriMo in November, but starting tomorrow on the first I'm going to try out the ideas mentioned in the book.

So, in 30 days, I am going to attempt to write 50,000 words on my novel Music of The Night (because thats the one with the least amount of plot so far) by the 30th of March. I plan to keep daily updates on this massive undertaking, mainly just word count and such, as I think much of what I will be writing won't be fit for anyone's eyes. ;)

If I make the 50,000 word mark, I will have most of a novel, and Russell will take me to Luciano's (a very good, but expensive local Italian restaurant) for dinner. If I "lose", we'll still go to Luciano's but I'll have to pay (ouch).

Now I am going to go enjoy my new Sims game before I sell my soul to my keyboard.