LostCarPark's Journal

jamesb's Mum was in London for the weekend, and she kindly brought back my Psion. It's good to have it back again. I started writing something on the train. I'm not sure if it's going anywhere, but I got over 500 words written, so at least I can be doing something more productive than watching Lost on my train journeys.

Have also located leather case, which will hopefully protect it from befalling any nasty accidents.

In other news, I have my final Junior Achievement class tomorrow. Ispent this evening writing out certificates to give them at the end of tomorrow's class. I don't have to do very much for this class, as it's the teams presenting their work to the class. For some reason that makes me more nervous than the classes where I had a lot to do.

I'll report on how it goes tomorrow!

Wow, I've hit thirteen thousand words. Wrote nearly two and a half thousand today. I'm quite pleased about both of these facts, even though to be on schedule I really ought to have written fifteen thousand.

I haven't been this excited about a story since my first NaNoWriMo attempt in 2002. I think I have a pretty good idea of where the story is going, but it may have other ideas. It's already surprised me a few times, and the surprises have a habit of getting bigger as the month goes on. Several of the characters have already taken on a life of their own. It can be kinda worrying when you ask a character to do something, and they refuse, insisting they would never do that and they're going to do this instead.

In terms of the plot that I outlined at the beginning of the month, I've covered about half what I expected to have by now. Unless I start covering ground a lot faster, I may have to shorten the plot or I'll be writing waaay into December. Which wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

My commute gives me an hour on the train each morning and evening, which has proved very valuable. On a good day I can get a little over 500 words each way. If I get a few minutes to write at lunchtime and in the evening, I've made my target for the day.

In the past the problem has usually been thinking of what to write. This story has mushroomed in my head, and I keep thinking of more and more to add to it. My biggest worry is that I'll forget it all. I've broken all the rules, working almost totally from memory, with hardly any written notes, and hardly any character development done in advance. But at the moment it doesn't seem to matter. I'm amazed how quickly the characters seem to have blossomed into distinct people, at least in my mind.

Let's just hope it doesn't all dry up and leave me stranded!

I'm planning to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, so a few minutes from now would be the perfect time to get an early head start, but...

We're trying to get the next issue of The Brentford Mercury out this week, and I now have almost all of the content, so it would be the perfect opportunity to get that put to bed (apart from the few buts I'm missing that can be slotted in at the last minute), but...

Today a friend gave me a copy of Age of Empires 3. I have been a huge AoE fan since version 1, so maybe I could just have a quick look and get on with the others tomorrow...

Which will I do?

I'm sure this writing lark is supposed to be easier. It's probably my own fault for not having a detailed plan when I started. Sometimes, though, it's hard to come up with a detailed plan until you know how the characters pan out, and things don't always work out as you expect.

I wrote the first draft of a short story, and it had some ideas I like, but the overall story was rather dull and failed to engage. I'm not going into detail, but it was largely about a single chracter on a journey, and it didn't have enough opportunities for her to engage others. I thought adding a second character for her to sound off might help, and it did, but while the original character improved, the new character come off rather one dimensional, only there to support the main one.

In the meantime, Ive had a bunch of new ideas, and come up with a stronger end for the story. I've decided to seperate the second character, to give the two very different reasons for being there. I'm also going to change the antogonist a bit to make him more relatable. He does some irrational things, so I want to try to show that in his mind they are both rational and reasonable.

I was about to set this story aside, to work on another idea I've had for a while, but suddenly I''m excited about it again.

It's a good feeling.