Like the first day:
Begin with an outline. Are you writing a story? How to write an interesting story that hasn’t been done before is a big challenge. So how to break it up into smaller, manageable bits? Write a bit every day. You must choose a theme or a genre to begin with, of course, which is hard, because you don’t know what you want to write. Fantasy or Science Fiction or comic books are what I know, of course, my wonderful dork world is filled with all sorts of them. I love to read, I devour books, I read like my life depends on it. Does it follow, then, that I should be able to write as well? Can I hold that many different things in my mind at once to create a world, can I communicate what I really want, what I see in my head? I can get totally lost in the world of a book to the point of not knowing that someone is speaking to me. I have more bookshelves than other furniture types, or used to for a while anyways.
It's basically my brain vomiting on the page, vaguely sentence-like.
The second day, a little more interesting:
Many say “write what you know.” Well... I know that’s often meant to be “write from your life in someway.” But what about “write what you know” meaning write like what you read? I’ve got a whole bookshelf dominated by SciFi, fantasy, and comic books. But then the problem is trying to not copy what someone else has done. And also don’t just write a “fanific” because those are often horrible and they won’t get you much of anywhere. It’s hard to create your own world, it is. You can’t force it, it needs to come organically. I know I could be a writer, maybe not for life, but for fun... I’m always composing my thoughts into writable sentences in my head. That has to mean a little bit of something. It’s putting a new twist on something, it’s finding something just different enough that it’s new but not to different that no one will buy it. Mistborn, great series I read recently, created a new world (literally, in part of the story) which had a very different type of “magic.”
This is a problem I've noticed. So many people advise you to "write what you know." I don't think it's necessarily good advice. I mean, if people like Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite SciFi/Fantasy writers, wrote what he knew, we would probably never have any of the Discworld books at all, and that's a great shame. After all, the world really isn't flat, carried on the backs of four elephants, on the back of a turtle, flying through space. It's a little more of the round variety.
Anyways. I've written at least 100 words already I know, but it doesn't matter. It's the writing every day. Oh also this idea came from A Splintered Mind, his response to NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo. If ya don't know what those are, google em if you really care to know. A good friend of mine has done NaNoWriMo since, oh, high school? She's also graduated from art school and lives in New York with her girlfriend. Overachiever, psh. "graduating." Who needs it? (er, me.) NaNoWriMo has always been intimidating to me, and I don't know if I'd ever be able to handle it - partly because I never remember that it's going to be happening, partly because I can't figure out what the hell to write about. That's another reason I started a blog but I've been floundering. I don't really know what to write about. All the interesting things are taken. And when I write about stuff happening in my life...? Well mostly I get inspired to do that when a) really weird shit happens like the bird in my house last night or b) Shit is bad and depressing and I need an outlet and it's not very funny. I guess it's all in how you read it, but still. Watching me freak out about money, my long-distance boyfriend and graduating I'm sure is only entertaining for so long.
I feel like I might be running out of steam for this post, and I need to go to class soon.
I guess in the long run I'm just trying to figure out what I really want from my life, what I want to be doing, where I want to be, who I want to be with... I'm 22, these are the big questions we ask, I know this; it doesn't help me find the answers quicker though. I don't know if I want to teach, or do something in the history field, or go to grad school, or, or, or.... with so many options how do you choose one? Over the past two days I've been toying with the idea of getting my masters or a second Major in Latin. It come to time and money and wanting to be able to move... would I want to go to some other school? Can I afford to? Do I really think I can comprehend that language enough to teach kids the subjunctive, double dative, and past-contrary-to-fact grammar, answering their questions... do I even understand things now, in my Latin class? Yes I understand I have two more quarters to get it, but that's only seven months or so... oh well I guess that is a good amount of time, isn't it? I just don't know. I haven't made any plans to take the GRE ever, so I may have already screwed myself out of the grad school option. I could just stay, I guess, get my masters... I just feel like a medium fish in a gigantic pond the ocean. I guess it is challenging me to be better, to try to stand out a little... I don't know. I just don't know what I want to do. I wish my boyfriend would just be willing to move down here for a little while. Maybe he would see that the city isn't so bad, my state isn't so bad... (at least our roads aren't falling apart as much as his.) And I hate the cold. I don't really want to move more north, where he's wondering why it hasn't snowed yet... early November and he's wondering why it hasn't snowed. Guh. Noooo thank you. I like my happy medium of a little bit of everything weather-wise.
And now it's time to leave for class so that I am not late. Again.
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