A Rather Late New Year's Resolution

Yesterday I was thinking about one of my books that I hadn't worked on in such a long time, Sarea (working title, y'know). Originally, it used to be what I considered my greatest 'masterpiece'. It was 135 pages long (enormous, as I ignorantly thought), and had characters based on pretty much everyone I knew, from two of my closest friends to a girl from my soccer team. In my twelve-year-old eyes, it was the best thing I had ever written.

And then came the revelation.

That's what I hate about writing styles maturing. In just one summer I had expanded my literary accomplishments to 'Sense and Sensibility', 'The Two Towers', 'Inkheart', 'Eragon', and a number of other really good books. And of course, that improved my writing skills almost too rapidly.

After writing my NaNoWriMo Novel, which turned out really good (even if I say so myself, hehe), Sarea just seemed so...so weak. Dull. Pointless. Immature. I tried re-writing it and keeping the basic concept, but I quickly lost interest.

The more I kept thinking about it, the more I would tell myself, "Y'know, there's no point in just letting it sit. You should just ditch it." And immediately afterward I would gasp, "Whoa! I can't believe I would even THINK of doing that!!".

Well.

I finally deleted the blasted thing.

And then I immediately started writing it again.

*sigh* I guess I just can't shake it. Not that I mind! (lol)

Yes, I really do want to keep that old thing. And so I've decided to take the 'NaNoWriMo approach'. I'm going to just plunk myself down and write a thousand words or so in a day, not caring how bad it sounded. I'm going to try (try--key word!) to jam the book with exciting scene after exciting scene, and not read the thing over until I'm done. Hey, it worked with my NaNo novel; maybe it'll work with Sarea.

Basically, all I've figured out is that I'm at least keeping my main character. However, she's no longer a serf, and she might just have one sibling instead of three. Also, I don't think there's room for her best friend. *gasps in realization* . That was one of the characters based on ME!! Never mind, I'm keeping her. XD

Yeah. That's a glimpse of my spectacular plan.

Izori

Writing Tip: Drafts

Who in the world thought of the word 'draft' (as in, "I wrote the first draft of my book")? It's one odd word.

Anyway, another tip for writing a book is doing drafts. I like to write my first drafts in a notebook, not on the computer. It's basically the 'bones' of the book, and you can make your first draft as messy as you want. Like mine--crossed out words, squished in sentences, abbreviated names, and scribbled notes. Then I type it all up on the computer and start adding the 'muscle'--incorporating the notes, rewriting sentences, and so on. Then I re-read the whole thing and edit it all.

Sometimes, like with the Elandai series, I don't do drafts. That's a little harder, because if you made your plot do one thing, and then later realize that you didn't want it to do that, you can't go back and fix it. That makes the Elandai series a little interesting, because even though sometimes I do think ahead, I have no clue where I'm going next (like now).

Izori