Aha!

I have a hard time remembering the journey, once I'm at the end of it. I look behind me at the mountains and valleys and go "pshah, that was nothing." So, since this blog is about my writing journey I have been determined to write down when I come against difficulties that boggle my mind, hurt my head, and etc. Today, being a day solely devoted to writing, I came across just such a thing. A snarling beastie of a problem, if I do say so myself.

I do not write outlines. In highschool my dad made me write outlines. In college my professors make me write outlines. It is torturous. When I write books I have a basic idea of what will happen (or more likely than not just a sentence, a picture, a person's personality). Then, as I write the plot unfolds itself like a blossoming flower.

So what's the problem? For the first half of the story I don't know what's going to happen. It's exciting. It's exhilarating to write and see what comes out. It's like rolling a pair of dice that contain words and plot etched on their surfaces and I'm just waiting to see what will roll out.

Then as I continue, about half-way to the end, I know everything. I know all the twists (usually). I know my characters, even the ones that haven't surfaced yet. So the tricky thing is: knowing how everything will turn out, but still being excited about writing it. If I don't want to write it, why would anyone else want to read it, and why on earth would anyone re-read it? And since when dealing with a book an author must read, and re-read, and re-read, and Ah! re-read, I must be excited about the book through the whole writing process.

This happened when I was doing NanoWriMo in November. I was starting to get bored so I just had a roof fall down on their heads. It was great fun. But in Pixie Princess there are no roofs that can cave in. Which is surprising, considering they're underground. But the point is I'm coming to the end (40,588 words, woohoo!) and I still have a whole lot of story to write, and I still need to be a whole lot of excited. So I'm taking a break to write this blog, to think over my story, to remember why I love it, why it makes me excited.

1. I love Izka. She's the one telling the story and she is hilarious.

2. I do love Carter, as terrible as he is.

3. I love my little Dwarves, and I'm sad that I just wrote the last scene with them. (Yesterday I was wandering through my kitchen, hugging my laptop to myself, telling my mum I didn't want to do it, that she couldn't make me, that I didn't want to say good-bye to my Dwarves.)

4. Anton and Ashley are amusing, and I can't wait to write the scene where you first get to meet them.

5. If I can actually get this one published it will be a tie-in for a book I'm writing with two of my friends. (They are amazing! I love you Kassie and Autumn!) It's set in the same world, has the same mythos, and stuff. Wait. Mythos is a word right?

Oh my dear. It's a kind of beer. I think I shall just die.