I’m doing it…

Writers, editors, and self-help writing books all preach the same thing. Write, write, and write some more….then write a little more. On the first story/novel I was fresh to the whole thing and was super eager to do something. So I wrote 2000 words, 3000 words here or there. Momentum and tenacity sort of got me to my 49,820 words and an ending. On the one hand I was super stoked because I’d finished a story and in all honesty I’d rarely done that. I’d started a lot of stuff, but almost never finished anything. On the other hand I was bummed for two reasons. The first was because it was the typical story I always wrote and think of. There were no star wars references, no force, no swords but it was still a Star Wars clone. I changed the names to protect the innocent.

So fast forward three or four weeks and a myriad of starts and stops. Gothic vampire novel idea. Check. Uber cool Urban fanstasy. Check. Hip futuristic Cyberpunk concept. Check. All of these great ideas/concepts were no more than a page or two and I kept returning to this idea that I wanted to write a PI crime story. I read through Sue Grafton novels, and more Robert B. Parker books (I concentrated on the Sunny Randal series) and while I sorted through story idea I returned to one I’d started a few weeks earlier.

It was only a page and a half and crude as hell. I fixed up that page and a half and something clicked while I was doing it. Soon I was off. I realized a few things about my characters and about what makes a story good. Grafton and Parker both rely on the everyday, almost mundane, routine of their characters to spruce things up. A few conflicts here and there and suddenly the mystery is nearly in the back ground. We almost don’t care about it. I found this enlightening and amazing. I’ve tried to incorporate it in this story I’m working on.

I also toned down the characters. All of my characters are really nothing more than super heroes. Flawless and perfect. This time he’s not. Slightly larger than life? Maybe but not perfect. I’m also writing almost everyday. I’ve committed to at least 5,000 words a week and have broken that down to about 1,000 words a day. Never less. A couple of the days have been fairly rough and I’ll probably need to do a really good edit job but its been fun and I’m really feeling like the whole thing is coming together. When I manage to finish it I believe it’ll be the first story I’ve ever written that wasn’t either a sci-fi or a fantasy. I’m pretty excited about that.