Taking a Step Back

I've been making really great progress on Project 1 & 2 (that's what I call them at least).  My biggest issue right now is that with Project 1, I keep second guessing myself.  I wonder if I should have put more (or less) detail in certain places?  If there needs to be a chapter added here or there?  What about these minor characters - what drives them to act the way they do? Do I need to explain that in as great of detail as the major characters?  You know, things like that.  It's really impeding the progress I was making on Project 2.  Well, that and the fact that I scrapped almost 9800 words to start over, and am only at about 2000 right now.  :(

So what am I going to do?  I still feel the urge to write.  I need to write.  It helps relieve some of my stress, especially this time of year with the holidays coming up next week.

My solution?  I'm going to revisit an old friend.  It doesn't have an official title yet (although one is in the works, don't worry!), but I just call it "13".  I have 103 typed pages (single spaced. I can't stand to read double spaced when I'm working on a project, but it is handy when I've printed it and am proofing a hard copy), and just under 44000 words.  It took me several weeks to get it to that point, and I'm really proud of what I have written, but I got lost about 43,000 words, and found myself kind of wandering around with my plot. I set it aside and worked on other projects.  Now that I've had a few months away from it, I'm ready to dive in.

Of course, I'm slightly terrified that I'll start reading what I've written and decide that half of it is crap and it needs to be scrapped.  But, now that I think about it, I've learned a lot about my characters in the months off (even though I'm not actively working on a project, the characters are always there in the back of my mind, bugging me), and I'm not too worried about rewriting sections of the story.

So, wish me luck!

New Directions

After writing just over 9700 words on Project 2, I have decided to scrap most of it and start over, taking the whole project in a totally different direction.

It's both a good and a bad thing.  Good in that I think this project will now go the direction I ultimately want it to go. Bad in that I have just lost 9700 words and 2 days worth of work.

I am really hoping that this all turns out in my favor.  So far, it seems to be.  I just hope that it will continue on that way.

Project #2

So now that NaNoWriMo 2010 is over, I've decided to keep up the pace and start on my 2nd project.  It's a continuation of the story from the NaNoWriMo project, only a few years later.  It will be interesting to see how things turn out.  I have a loose story line for it, but I'm not sure if I'll stick to it 100%.

I know it's crazy to even think about starting a project in December, but I really want to keep working on this.  I've only been thinking about it for.....oh, since I was a senior in high school......so I might as well get it done, right?  That's what I thought.

Also, just re-read the NaNoWriMo project, and I have to admit that I am appalled at how many spelling errors I had!  new instead of knew.  the instead of they.  So okay, maybe they were just typos.  I do tend to type really fast, and if it is an actual word, of course the dictionary in Word 2010 isn't going to catch it!  Also, there were a few inconsistencies that I found and corrected, so that was worth it, too.  Final Word word count ended up being just under 52,000 words.

Anyway, so I'm going to try and get this second project finished this month.  I'm already off to a bit of a late start, but I didn't really get going on Project 1 in November until about the second week, so I figure I'm going at about the same pace.  I will try to keep this updated as to how my progress goes, but I'm not going to make any promises.  My days (and some nights) have been taken what with work, Christmas, family parties, and a cousin's wedding this month.