Entry 2

Someone has to leave the island

           My dad always says, “Before we can get another pet, somebody has to leave the island.”

         

           This saying seems to be the solution to my predicament. So here’s what happened. Okay so I’m writing along, thinking that I’ve gotten pretty far now that I’m on chapter eleven. Then this happened.

            I hit a block, and it hurt. After the shock, I got up and brushed the dirt off all the while thinking where did I go wrong? Okay let’s go through a list.

1.      Are all the characters in place? Yup.

2.      Is the world around them built? Yeah.

3.      Do the characters readers are suppose to care about have enough page time? …..Oh no.

           This character might be a minor character, but he’s still important. Looking back I notice someone else sort of stealing his spot light. Now she’s a fun character I really like, but in the end she has to leave the island. One of my friends was particularly not found of this, but I had to.

            So now I have to completely remove her from the three chapters she’s in. Seems easy right? Ha, nope. Despite being a secondary character, this girl was proactive in what was going on with the story. This was one of the reasons I didn’t want to let her go, but I had to. Every story has a cutting room where pieces are left behind. Just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it fits well with the other ideas. One of the hard things about this writing thing is not letting yourself get too attached to the characters. One of them might not work out so well, and they’re going to have to leave the island.

             I bid farewell to this character. Maybe I’ll find another spot for her further down the road. 

Entry 1

Well Hi There!

       Well, I finally got around to my first entry. I guess I should introduce myself a little. I’m sort of a writer. It’s more of a hobby, an obsessive hobby…I’m moving on before things get too personal. So what am I writing? Well, it’s fantasy. I like the story I do, but I have a lot of characters to keep up with, and I keep questioning myself with the direction I’m going in, especially with the characters.

       I found getting to know a book character is harder then getting to know a real person. Real people have personalities and past that they paved themselves. Fictional characters aren’t so lucky. You got to build them up a little before they start reveling things about themselves on their own. Now I’m currently editing a chapter with the POV of this character.

(I inverted the colors because I’m not done with it, and I wanted it to look cool. Don’t judge me.)

       This character was the one of the most difficult for me to figure out. In the early drafts, he just wandered around boring me with his mental diatribes about how much his life sucked. Yes, it was my fault he did this, and even I got annoyed. So I had to recalculate. Currently he doesn’t really complain, but his life probably sucks more then it did before. At least he’s doing something about it. Other characters are a little easier, like this one.

 

(This is a girl, I know she looks like a guy but…yeah.)

      I wanted a quirky tomboy in this character, and she’s been like that from day one. When was day one? About three to two years ago. In between there and now around 227,000 words have been written. I’m only using around 90,000 of those words, and twelve characters. I admit seeing the work of my 15/16 year old self is both weird and painful. Weird in the since of it feels like it’s written by an entirely different person. painful because, well, I was 15/16.

       I think writing this story has helped me grow as a person, as well as my characters. Do I think this story will someday see the light of day? Right at this moment, I have to say, no. I still have a lot of work and research to do. It’s like they always say, if you think writings easy, you’re doing something wrong. Will I finish this story? I’m determined to get there, yes. I want to make an idea come to life, and prove to myself I can finish something. So here’s my goal, to finish the rough draft of my story by the end of the spring, and to finish editing it by the end of the summer.

            Now that this goal is out there for every one to see I have to reach it.