Axodys

I stumbled upon this recent interview with George R. R. Martin. He’s a pretty interesting guy and I didn’t realize he’d been so involved in television. Considering his Song of Ice and Fire series has been the single biggest influence on my novel I found his quote on what beginning writers should and shouldn’t do especially interesting: GRRM: Do NOT do what they call “fan-fiction”. That’s not a very indicative term, I wrote fan-fiction, but I wrote ORIGINAL fan-fiction. I was a fan, and I wrote fiction, so it’s “fan-fiction”, but it was my own characters, it was my own universe from the beginning. I think it’s a very bad idea for a young writer to start writing in somebody else’s universe, whether it’s my universe or the Star Trek universe, or Robert Jordan’s universe, or Marion Zimmer-Bradley’s, it doesn’t matter. Create your own universe, create your own characters. That’s a HUGE part of what it takes to write, and if you borrow someone else’s universe as I see so many other people doing, you don’t learn the necessary skills to create your own.

Sounds like I’m on the right track.

I didn’t really get ahead on my novel this weekend like I thought I might. I’m actually a little behind for the day in fact, but it’s still been productive. My word count is right at 6148 so I just need to crank out another 500 or so before I go to sleep to get back on schedule.

Well, my novel is plugging right along. I was behind on my word count most of the day, but I’m now slightly ahead again with 5,053 words so far. It’s amazing to think that I’m 10% of the way to the final goal. It hasn’t been completely easy, but I’m still enjoying myself quite a bit.

The rest of today is going to be pretty busy (Happy Anniversary Mary!) so most likely I’ll be behind again at the end of the day. Things are going to get quite difficult a week from now when the high school basketball season starts up. I have no idea how I’m going to fit everything in.

On a football note: WSU managed to beat UCLA in the last home game of the season. I really hope they can win the next two and the Pac-10 title. ASU and UW are their two remaining opponents.

I had a breakthrough evening after work last night and managed to bring my novel wordcount up to 1952 so I’m well on pace after my first full day of writing. Despite some of the advice I’ve seen in regard to this project I’ve been going back and improving some of my earlier work as I go. It’s much easier for me to build on to the skeleton I’ve laid out, than blindly going forth. As long as I’m always making additions and not really cutting anything I should be okay with my wordcount goals.

I’m having a lot of fun so far, but in the back of my mind I have this feeling that I’ve almost got too many ideas going on to be happy with a mere 50,000 words. It’ll be interesting to see how I feel about things a month from now.

11:15AM up 6 days, 18:51, 1 user, load averages: 0.98, 0.42, 0.35

I’m completely amazed that it’s already November 1st. So much is going on (or will be going on) this month. Sunday Mary and I will celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary and the high school basketball season is less than two weeks away. And of course I’m working on my first novel.

Speaking of The Novel, last night (technically this morning) I commenced writing. Two hours and 443 words later I had manage to introduce a couple characters and more importantly, really begun solidifying things in my imagination. I spent a few hours yesterday evening jotting down ideas, coming up with interesting names, and sketching out a map of the world everything takes place in and that really helped get things started. The funny thing about the whole process is that I’ve been thinking about it and coming up with new ideas ever since. I’m planning to work on things again during my lunch, but in some ways I wish I could start right now.