Just to keep the daily streak alive and update on the day's progress.
I didn't get up early, as I allowed myself to rationalize that I had plenty of time to write today and would do so once I was up, since I didn't have to work.
Well, I won't make that mistake again. I let the morning get away, spent on finishing up a novel I was reading this week ("A Dark, Dark Wood" by Ruth Ware - more on that in a moment.) Then, the babe and I had a meeting with our chosen wedding venue to sign the contract. It's not for almost two years, but with Covid and all, we wanted to pick a place early.
After we got that done, we came home and had lunch and watched the second half of "There's Something About Mary," which we started a few days ago. Then it was off to a wake for a family friend.
We stopped for an early dinner on the way home, and got home around six.
It was at this point that I knew I had to write, still wanting to finish the short story I'd been working on all month, the one I knew was going no where and was really just an anecdote. It lacks any sort of plot, cohesion, theme, and has only the barest semblance of characterization. And, all I wanted to do at that point was sit down and watch a movie or start a new Netflix or Prime series. We just finished "The Office" last night.
I decided to go ahead and finish the story. It took 410 words. But, it is done.
In that form, anyway.
While thinking about how I'd gotten myself into the predicament of being in the middle of a story with no point, no end in sight, and no clue what the heck I was doing or trying to do, that it was okay.
Well, not okay in the sense that i should send it out. Just okay, because I started the story with the intent of getting myself writing again, with no idea what I wanted to write, and it did that. I wrote 5549 new words in October, along with eight blog entries. And I learned something about myself as a writer.
Free writing, as it turns out, or writing into the dark, pantsing, or whatever you want to call writing with no plan and no outline, is a wonderful way for me to generate ideas and practice. It is not, at my current level of writing craft, the way to write a good story.
I thought about my college writing. While I could always free-write my way through an essay, any paper of length always had me working out a basic outline, mostly just an organizational flow chart of what came next. A few lines and headings was enough to guide me through a paper of almost any length.
So, I think I need to do that with my fiction. I have a terrible habit or not finishing stories, never mind longer works, because I always write myself to nowhere. The outline, even a short, basic one, will hopefully help me sort that problem out.
Also, I was able to think about my story in a new way, and I realized that, while my seat of the pants idea was kind of fun, I had chosen the wrong protagonist. If I flip the story and write from another viewpoint, things will be a lot more interesting and there is probably a decent story hiding there.
So, going forward, I'll be outlining. I'll let you know how that works out.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned, I finished a novel this morning, and it got me thinking about some writing advice I'd heard that said, basically, that a novel or story was a promise to the reader, that the cover, genre, and even author's name said what that promise was, and that breaking that promise was the surest way to disappoint the reader.
"In a Dark, Dark Wood," by Ruth Ware is, by looking at the cover, a horror novel of some sort. There's even a quote from Reese Witherspoon on the front cover - "Prepare to be scared... really scared!"
This is not a horror novel. It is a suspense novel decked out to look like a horror novel. It's not scary, at all. It has moments of tension, but nothing in it is particularly scary. The setting, a glass house in the middle of a dark forest, could be scary, and there are even moments in the book when I think scary is about to happen. It just never does. In fact, it gets close to scary and then rips that rug right out from under you.
Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad novel. But, because I was expecting scary, I was disappointed.
Make sure your readers know what they are getting into. Otherwise, the best writing in the world is going to fall flat. This novel taught me that lesson, and I hope to remember it every time I put something out for publication.
Anyway, I'm going to go relax for an hour before bed. Hopefully we can find a new show to get ready to fall asleep with.
See you tomorrow.
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