{"id":280,"date":"2008-10-27T00:42:43","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T07:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=280"},"modified":"2008-10-27T00:42:43","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T07:42:43","slug":"okay-a-new-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/okay-a-new-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"Okay, a new direction"},"content":{"rendered":"

I owe a lot to Aneeka.\u00a0 She is the one who motivated me to write The Phoenix of Nova Terra<\/em> back in 2007 when I didn’t really think I could finish a novel before the end of the school year.\u00a0 Like I said in the last post, I’ve hit something of a wall in my writing life recently, and a couple of days ago she was the one who pointed it out to me.\u00a0 The conversation went something like this:<\/p>\n

Empress<\/strong>: lol – okay, okay!
\nhow are your stories going?
\nme<\/strong>: very slowly
\nfrustrating
\nmostly just because of personal disorganization
\nEmpress<\/strong>: yeah, that can happen. tired of school? or just a lot of things you want to do?
\nme<\/strong>: school is pretty easy right now
\nit’s just hard to get back into writing regularly
\nI dunno
\nI’m trying to juggle two projects
\nEmpress<\/strong>: maybe that’s the problem?
\nit’s hard focusing on two stories at once
\n(says the girl that does it all the time – the irony!)
\nbut it really is hard to get all focused on two projects at once
\nme<\/strong>: it probably is
\nEmpress<\/strong>: I flit between projects because I’m not that into them and write because I’ve been inspired (and tend to be inspired on different stories all the time)
\nwhen I get into a project though, then it’s best that I leave the rest behind and just focus on that one
\nget out all that I have and see how far I can go before I get distracted again
\nme<\/strong>: yeah
\nI’m trying to be 100% into two projects at the same time
\ntrouble is, I can’t keep the momentum going on both
\nEmpress<\/strong>: yeah. looks like you’re human, after all \ud83d\ude09
\nme<\/strong>: dangit!
\nEmpress<\/strong>: you should choose one to focus on and then, if inspiration hits for the other one, focus on that one for a bit before turning back to the main project
\nme<\/strong>: grr
\nEmpress<\/strong>: think of it this way. You could struggle for 6 months trying to work on two projects and arrive halfway done with both
\nOR you could focus on one project for 6 months, finish it, and then have plenty of energy to finish the next one
\nme<\/strong>: that’s true I guess
\nEmpress<\/strong>: it’s better than wearing yourself out
\nthen you’ll be left with no project finished
\nand just a heap of frustrated dreams
\nme<\/strong>: I guess that’s right
\nquestion is, do I revise my old novel or do I go ahead with the new one?
\nI’m more excited about the new one, but I want to get the old one finished
\nEmpress<\/strong>: how long would the old one take to get finished?
\nwait…and you’re having problems with them right now, right?
\nyou know, I would think it’s easier to edit two stories then to write two stories at once. maybe you could finish up the new story and then edit both of them at the same time?
\nme<\/strong>: that’s an idea
\nEmpress<\/strong>: and NaNoWriMo is coming up. you could finish up the first draft by next month and whallah! only have 2 stories to edit \ud83d\ude00
\nme<\/strong>: ugggggggggggh
\nI coooooooooould
\nthat’s intense, though
\nEmpress<\/strong>: well, doing two projects at once is intense as well
\nwhy not just switch it around and do this kind of intensity instead? \ud83d\ude09<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, after mulling it over for a couple of days, I’ve decided to do things a little differently.<\/p>\n

Instead of trying to do two major projects at once, I’m going to put the revision of Phoenix<\/em> on hold for now and focus all my energy on Hero in Exile<\/em>.\u00a0 For November, instead of doing nanowrimo, I’ll try to get 50,000 words deep into this novel instead.\u00a0 After that, if I do roughly 1,000 words a day, I should be in good shape to finish it before the end of January.\u00a0 I don’t anticipate this novel going over 120,000 words, and if it tries to, I’ll do my best to reign it in.<\/p>\n

So that’s my goal: Finish Hero in Exile<\/em> before the end of January.\u00a0 Oh, and write 50,000 words in November.<\/p>\n

I’ve noticed that I tend to either be too focused or too distracted.\u00a0 Trying to balance two projects at the same time has taught me that…well, I can’t do it very well.\u00a0 But I do<\/em> know that once I have one project that I can focus on, I can focus on it until it gets done.\u00a0 That’s what I’m going to do now.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I was chatting with Drek <\/a>from the writing group, and found out that he could program a way cool widget for my sidebar!\u00a0 It’s going to be a pair of speedometers that show my daily wordcount and my wordcount over the course of the last seven days.\u00a0 Oh, and if I’m nice, he might program a widget that displays my writing projects as status bars!\u00a0 I’m way excited!<\/p>\n

Drek recently designed a website for nanowrimo this year<\/a>.\u00a0 The idea is that every minute, it displays a new word from his novel.\u00a0 Something like that.\u00a0 It’ll be really interesting to see what happens once november starts up.<\/p>\n

I can definitely say that the goatee gives Drek programming +2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I owe a lot to Aneeka.\u00a0 She is the one who motivated me to write The Phoenix of Nova Terra back in 2007 when I didn’t really think I could finish a novel before the end of the school year.\u00a0 Like I said in the last post, I’ve hit something of a wall in my… Continue reading Okay, a new direction<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[42,46,20,4,599],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds","tag-frustrations","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-quark-writing-group","tag-the-lost-colony","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-4w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}