Writing in Melbourne

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