by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
So. I’m reading and re-reading a number of books so when I throw myself back into actually “just writing” the first book in the four book series I’m working on, I won’t feel like I’m spinning my wheels.
More heroine for this first book looks like this:
Mixed with this:
Things, in some ways, are going so well that there’s a huge amount of momentum for me to just “keep writing.” The only thing I’m worried about at this point is in my quest to write a first draft I can believe in, I’ll continue to have the whole thing collapse on a regular basis and four years from now I’ll be in exactly the same place I am now.
Which would suck.
And, as such, here I am reading as much as I can before I start writing again. One thing I’m really focusing on is character development. I say that because the first book in the series is a lot more like Mare of Easttown, in its own way, than, say, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But one has to note how, well, boring that book is for the first 135 odd pages. It’s just dull as dirt. I’ve often speculated it’s so bad because that’s the part of the novel that Stieg Larsson wrote and rewrote and then something happened and he realized how to fish the rest of the series.
At least, that’s what makes me feel better to believe.
I just refuse to keep spinning my wheels because I started writing again and I wasn’t prepared. I want to know exactly who my characters are, what they believe and, most importantly, what their motivations are. Given that I’m just writing the first drafts of these novels and that sounds rather dumb.
But, as I said, it’s very difficult for me to “just write” crap because for me to write something, anything of fiction, I have to believe in it. The upside o fall of this is my storytelling ability has improved significantly since I started this breached birth creative project.
