Writing in Melbourne

I've been a very bad writer this week, averaging less than 200 words per day. I lost the initial momentum that piggybacked me up until the week before. A mixture of feelings and little happenings got in the way of writing. Things that I so want to use as excuses but there is no excuse good enough for the slumped labour. I got careless. But I have to admit this writing business is not easy on the guts. It is as lonesome as it gets. Everyday there's something that beckons you over to the other side of solitude. No sane man would want to live like this. Yet I'm not brave enough to stop. It got me wondering: Would my life be any less meaningful without this self-induced torment? And has this quest been an attempt to infuse meaning into a meaningless void all along? To be honest I don't have a definite answer. But I know I would have still been dreaming about writing had there not been certain recent incidents that rendered this next step necessary. Writing used to be hard.

Last week's word count goes: 300 , 340 , 240 , 310 , 540 , and 90 . What's the matter with 90 words? Didn't try to cut corners but something happened in those 90 words that stopped me from writing on. The story took on a new possibility that was too unexpected to ignore. Surprising. But inevitable.

Because I went away from everything and everyone else to the other side of city to write, I produced   1,270  words today. In the past twenty days I have been writing in parks, pubs, cafés, libraries, bookshops, on trams, the street and who remembers where else. In the past I wouldn't have believed that writing could become top priority to me as it is now. I can hardly believe it even as I'm doing it. But word count doesn't even begin to get to the meat of the story. The extremely low hit-to-miss ratio as you plough away with the pen in longhand, the little pleasure it derives when you do come across something remotely valuable, the ranges of emotional endpoints you have to reach and the prospect of myriad facts to get right in later drafts - all stack up to form a colossal task that's seemingly insurmountable. All the while you're hardly allowed any break, even as you're under constant suspicion that you're drawing from a very dry well. Because a man doesn&

Life intervened. Today no writing done at all.

Word count for the last three days are 340 , 600 , and 340 words. Nothing extraordinary produced. Just plain consistent pagefills. Encountered quite a few branch-out points from which more writing could, well, branch out. The psychology of the MCs (especially MMC) were really difficult to fit into the story, given the research. Not so much in the factual correspondence but in my own creative prolificacy. I'm not writing enough junk. That's the main obstacle now.

Delved into MC's POV on N Days -155 and -154. Most of what was retrieved was iterations of previous revelations. Reaped more good stuff today though. Might be because I raised specific questions today to guide the writing. Liked the way new information materialized. Never could have consciously thought of this solution for the premise. Also worked on a one-sentence synopsis of the story, which fits perfectly into the current controlling idea. Perfectly might not mean the only fit. No don't go there. This fit is just fine.  300 , 510 , and 310 words respectively for the past three days.

Can't say that the writing that came after identifying the protagonist was refreshing. Standard plot possibilities sprung naturally from the character including a few promising scenes, but nothing too exciting. No spine. I think that's what the story is still lacking. A specific action that weaves through and unifies the story. I'm still identifying the story on a macro level and though I know what the hero must do in this story, I haven't found out why exactly. Saying that defies what Mamet taught about backstory. Am I too timid to fight against Hollywood orthodoxy? 590 and 320 words in the last two days. So far 2.5 times more productive than planned.

I'm in writing heaven. I've found my protagonist for the story's journey. Researched the web for the character's background and unearthed enough material to generate scenes simply by the uniqueness of the subject matter - and it came as a total surprise! The prosaic  350 words produced today actually helped to shepherd the line of thought down the road to this discovery. Goes to show that you can never tell gold from dirt until you agitate the mud pool long enough to see the shimmer at the bottom of the pan.

I don't know. But I think the controlling idea is ready. It's straightforward, clear, and singular. It's also everything I want to get across in the story. It took almost 5,000 words to nail down 9! The synthesis is only less than 0.2% of the overall word spill. 620 words today, almost half of which was produced in a semi-state of sleep. The pen chugged along as thoughtlessness took hold and took over the process. That's a very good sign. None of these words are gold. Mindlessness shall assign them their legit place in the work.

The past three days saw a boom in word count, covering 2,260 words ( 330 , 330 , and 1,600 words respectively)! In terms of story progression there wasn't much of a breakthrough. You were right, Mr. Hemingway, it does look like the first draft of anything is shit. Though there's an upsurge in word count story-wise it's going nowhere special. I tried getting into the heads of a few minor characters and digging up interesting facts about their world but none has so far yielded anything breathtaking. Only solution: write on. There isn't much of a choice.

The past two days' work has been pretty stable, cranking out more or less the average word count of 300 each ( 310 + 280 ). N-Day minus 164 saw a minor character's portrait forming. Whereas today's work was more of a Frankenstein's stitch, sewing together character journey and parenthesized notes to self into one clumsy, runic chunk of writing. Evoked a poem I wrote to help define the story's theme. The finer details of the story have yet to emerge, which worries me. I can't keep writing and rewriting the structure forever. Some sort of deadline for outlining has to be put in place (and soon) to jolt the creative process. Qualitatively I know the story I want to write. Unfortunately the MCs are little more than two-dimensional portraits that are not mature enough to elicit a finer plot.

How come the story keeps changing? Still with each change the story gained a little more substance than its previous version. So I guess in this case change is good. Today another slightly different story begged to be written when an old title I used to play with came up and took the story in another direction. Mainly in terms of setting. It was the setting I had wanted to base a story in but never got to writing. It helped meeting today's 300 -word quota in the form of a synopsis, covering Act I and the first part of Act II. The arc of the story stays largely the same. It's like the story moved to another town and that in turned gave rise to divergence in event possibilities. But does this mean the previous day's new structural design is out the window? It's still early to tell given the current volatile nature of the story formation. I'd rather go organic and let the story dictate. Judging from the way this is going the finished first draft is gonna be very messy.

Started Day 2 with a major overhaul of the story structure. The original structure didn't allow enough room to explore the MCs' capabilities to go to the ends of the emotional charges. The new structural design came as a surprise. Couldn't recall any story that employs this structure but its usability is yet to be determined. Filled in 360 words today by writing a scene in the new Act I. It ended up as if belonging to Act II or even Act III from the way the MCs interact. Still it's not yet a comprehensible scene without the actual beats. Established version 1 of the controlling idea. Needs further revision.

First day went pretty well. Squeezed in some planning/writing time during commute and lunch break. Did some light outlining and act design before starting. Bet this will undergo a major revision soon but this is enough to get me started. Came up with 36 sequences at planning - Act I: 8; Act II: 21; Act III: 7. Looks about right. A couple of dialogues cropped up during planning. Leaving them in might help to spawn scenes. Fulfilled the day's word-quota of 300. Actually doubled it ( 610 words). Picked the climactic sequence of Act III as the first page-fill. Working this way helps me to determine what earlier sequences should be about. Spent about 5 mins. clustering the sequence before writing for about 10. Struggled to keep the pen moving the first few mins. Once that passed the flow kicked in and words spilled over two A4 pages. Though the total words of the day did not actually cover the whole sequence. Probably about 3/4 of it. Might start the next day's page-fill with finis

One day I woke up and realized age is catching up with me. Though that doesn't fret me, the scrapping of dreams that comes with aging does. So I've decided to give myself a gift for my 30th birthday in November 2009. And I thought of a most delightful thing I could ever give myself. A novel. Written by me. For me. Or the first draft of a novel, anyway. For years I have wanted to write a book but never got to starting. I know if I don't do something about it now I might never do it. I don't want to wait another thirty years before I start. So I shall pace myself to finish the first draft of a 50,000-word novel by my 30th. Why 50,000? Mainly because that's the word goal appointed every year by NaNoWriMo, from whom I've borrowed the idea of keeping the pen moving - and it's a highly achievable figure, especially after I've stretched the idea of writing so many words in one month to five and a half months. And I've worked out the maths. From May 25th to