Saturday, November 9, 2019

AW: Morning blog no. 54

The empty page is intimidating. The page that is half written is more intimidating, to be honest. Because I sit there going 'how the hell am I going to finish this?' as I stare at the screen. I'm listening to rain noise not because it is raining outside but because I put that nature sounds thing on loop to drown out the noise of both of the kids digging through the legos. I'm still working on my NaNoWriMo project. I was foolish. I thought that I was going to get it done in 50k. I started out with 22k and figured I could finish it within a week. I'm at 53k and the plot shows no signs of wrapping up. I honestly have no idea what is going on with this story.

Editing it is going to be a nightmare, I just know it. Editing is the part of writing that I dislike. Not because I mind killing my darlings. It is because it takes twice as long than the act of writing. Once I finish one project, I am ready to move on to the next project and get it done. I can't stand pouring over the finished draft a billion and one times to get it ready to print.

But, because I am broke, I am the editor in chief. I suck at copy lay out. I struggle to get things to look good on the page. I can crank out material like its no big deal. It is when you get into things like making sure that there's a good balance between text and white space that I struggle. I realize, however, a straight up wall of text is a bad thing. So, I try to make sure I put in paragraph brakes and make my paragraphs varied in length. But when I am seized with an idea, I write until the idea is spent. That can make for some very long paragraphs.

I'm trying to stay on top of blogging but my brain is sucked up in trying to finish this goddamn fanfic-based fantasy novel. It's not set in the world of Evandar. It's not set in my goddamn science fiction universe. So it doesn't fit with what I have going on here except that it is fantasy. Sword and sorcery fantasy with more emphasis on the sword than the sorcery right now. Set during the era where Christianity is beginning to influence pagan England (even though I don't call it England). I've got this weird mix going on where the Duke is a pagan and his brother the Abbot (who literally lives just down the road) is obviously Christian. They have this agree to disagree pact between them. The Abbot prays for the Duke's soul, the Duke guards his brother's welfare because he is his brother. Stuff like that going on in the plot. I do have a few bible-thumping characters who got put on notice by the Duke to save that for when they're in their own fiefdoms.

Lots of potential for conflict and plot twists and such. And I find myself writing boring politics. It is tiring. I just want to finish this damn story and move on to something else.

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