Indecisiveness

In these past two weeks, I’ve been reminded once again how indecisive I can be when it comes to what kind of stories I want to work on. I hope I’m not the only writer (or any other creative art person) out there who constantly feels torn on projects.

It all started when I decided to pull up the document of one of my unfinished manuscripts of 2016. (You know, the one I mentioned in my previous blog post.) Turns out, the manuscript contained fewer words than what I remembered – about 38k words. I grabbed a sheet of paper so I could jot down notes for all the editing errors I encountered while re-reading it.

Yeah…On every single page, there would be something that I’d need to fix. It could have been something as simple as syntax, to something as complex as I need to slow the pacing down or add more description. I got to page 40/146 before I decided to set it aside for a day or two. It was dawning on me that I’d have to start from scratch with the re-writing, if I was planning on making this my Spring Project.

I then began to brainstorm other stories I had either briefly wrote about or never made it past the idea phase. At the seventh idea, I found myself expanding on the concept. Taking this as a good sign, I even created a chart to draft how I wanted the story arc to go.

But at some point last week, I returned to read that unfinished manuscript again. I set my notes aside and just decided to do a read-through. Tried to turn the inner editor off in my head and not worry about all the mistakes I was coming across. Got to page 90 before I called it quits.

Then I turned my attention back to that New Story Idea I was working on. I’m still figuring out the plot (mainly, how I want the story to end). And none of the characters have names. In fact, all of them are assigned a letter of the alphabet to identify themselves. And I also need to do a rough sketch of a map.

It’s clear that I'm not ready to begin writing this story on March 1, like I was hoping to do. The pre-planning stage is still in progress. But perhaps I can get going on it by the middle of March?

For this Spring Project, I’m also not sure how many words I want to aim at writing on a daily basis. I’m also thinking about making this more of a 2-month project, rather than my typical 1-month span. Just to see if I have the endurance to write regularly for that long.

I guess we’ll see what I end up doing in the weeks to come. Because even I don’t know what direction I’m going with all these variables.

Update On How Much (Or How Little) I’ve Been Reading/Writing Lately

For the past two or three months, I’ve been in the Season of Absorbing. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see my previous post HERE.) Since the start of the new year, I’ve already read seven books. And considering that there has only been seven weeks of 2018, you don’t need me to do the math for you.

In case you were curious, the last book I finished was THE GAUNTLET by Megan Shepherd. It’s the last in a trilogy - I hadn’t read its previous book in almost a year and a half – but I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the series. I liked the variety of characters, and I have to give a special shout-out to the alien Bonebreak because I thought he was hilarious. I was sorry to read that a few of the characters died by the end.

Anyway…with seven books already read this year, it’s nice to know that one of my New Year’s Resolutions/Goals has been going well. I’m 31.8% complete with my goal of reading 22 books. (I’m trying to think positive here. Compared to my other resolutions, this is the easiest one for me to assess my progress.)

Therefore, the pile of unread books sitting on my dresser is slowly shrinking. Except it currently possesses 17 books and not 15 because I bought two new novels last month. I’m obviously bad at trying to keep the pile under control. (So many books to read, so little time.)

And even though I’ve been doing a great job at trying to read on a more regular basis, I actually haven’t written anything creatively since NaNoWriMo ended back in November. I gave myself permission to not think too much about it, especially since I wanted to take a little break after winning NaNo and read books or watch tv shows instead, but now my fingers are starting to get antsy on my keyboard. They want to get back into the act of writing fiction.

I should probably warm up with a short story or two, but it’s been so long since I’ve written something with more of a manuscript length, so I’m thinking about taking up a large project again. I don’t really have anything “new” in mind for a story, but I’m wondering if I should rewrite/revise one of my previous manuscripts.

There are two unfinished manuscripts that I worked on in 2016 that I find myself being drawn back into. For one of them in particular (the more finished project), I revisited my old charts today for its storyline, which reminded me how much I liked the characters. Plot details need to be tweaked, though.

But then I recalled my almost-completed manuscript of summer 2015. Part of me wants to go back and read it, especially since I haven’t done so in almost two years, but then another part of me is afraid how much I’ll cringe upon reading those words. I wrote it two months before I officially went back to school for another degree, so I can’t imagine how bad my writing is compared to what it is now. (At least, I hope my writing has improved over the course of three years.)

So that’s what I’ve been pondering about lately. (Among other random things in life.) Stories that I’ve read, or stories that I’m thinking about writing. Stories in general, I guess.