Last week marked exactly five years since I decided to consider taking my writing seriously. And although I’ve certainly taken steps during that time period to put me on the path of a writer, I still feel like I have a long way to go. (The struggle is real.)
When I reached the decision to pursue writing half a decade ago, I still a junior in college and majoring in the sciences. I had already participated (and “lost”) in two NaNoWriMos. However, I had never actually written anything that could be considered the length of a manuscript, let alone actually complete a story of that size.
So I set out to prove to myself that, yes, I could write an actual manuscript. I mean, how else was I going to learn how to one day write a book?
Of course, the process was very stop-go at first. I spent that spring just in the brainstorm phase. During the summer, I wrote the beginnings of the story, but I wasn’t truly committed to writing it until that year’s NaNoWriMo rolled around. There is when I fully dove into my story, never veering off to write in “short story land.”
By the end of November, this working manuscript of mine still wasn’t finished. Heck, there were multiple characters that still didn’t have a name. I just gave them gibberish code names, knowing that I’d go back and replace them with their true names later. My main concern was to just keep writing, because I didn’t want something as silly as what to call the characters to hold me back.
Taking a break from writing all during the month of November, I focused on finals in December instead. I didn’t get back into writing that story until January.
During the first week of the new semester, we were hit with a mountain of snow. My school actually declared two snow days. Seeing how I was hardly in class that week, I had no homework to labor over, and I didn’t have anywhere to go because of the weather.
So I toiled away in my dorm room, determined to finish this manuscript once and for all. There was one day where I wrote for 7-8 hours, only taking an hour break in between to scarf some dinner down at the caf before heading back to my laptop.
And wouldn’t you know? By the end of the week, the story was finished. Of course, I had written many of the scenes out of order so I had to go back later and rearrange everything to make sense (and then write some more to fill in all the gaps), but I did it. I wrote and completed what I consider my first manuscript.
Was it any good, you may ask? Not at all. (But then again, most first manuscripts never are.) In fact, I haven’t re-read that story in a few years because just thinking about it makes me cringe. But you bet I was devastated when the flash drive containing the story broke two years ago. Luckily, due to my laziness, I was able to retrieve the manuscript through Word Document Recovery, and saved the manuscript onto my laptop until I got it transferred somewhere else.
Now fast-forward to the present. Tomorrow I will be officially embarking on my new Spring Project. I still plan on making this a two-month journey, and I plan to hopefully write at least 1300 words/day. (So less words per day than NaNoWriMo, but a more drawn-out process.) I’m also going forward with that New Story Idea that I mentioned in my last post.
During the course of the past two weeks, you’d think that I’d have all the brainstorming details figured out for this story. You know, like character names and plot and what this setting looks like on a map?
Yeah…no. I did sketch out a map, but I’m not sure if I’m going to follow it. Right now, perhaps it’s best not to confine myself to a particular setting before I even set out to write the story. And everyone in the story is still nameless. Including the protagonist. Last night, I started jotting down some possible names, but I haven’t assigned them to any characters yet. At least the overall plot has been thought out, including how I want it to end, so at least I have that going for me.
But mainly, I’m just going to dive into this project tomorrow and see where it takes me. If I wasn’t too concerned about naming characters five years ago, then I shouldn’t have them hold me back from writing nowadays, too.
I’m going to try my best to harness the drive I had all those years ago, and see this project from start to finish. Because the last time I had completed a manuscript was almost three years ago – which is too long of a time. (Although, that’s not to say all the writing I did in between was a waste.)
The only downside is I might have to sacrifice the part of my day when I read a book. But considering how I’m currently on book number 10 out of 22 for the year, and it’s only March, I should be okay. (In case you were curious, I’m approaching the end of GOLDEN SON by Pierce Brown.)
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