Writing, Writing, Writing

Happy to say that I've worked all morning on re-plotting the Violet's Monster trilogy. I finally have a working understanding of what every character wants and to what lengths they'll go to get whatever it is they want.

I love this part of writing - the thinking through the "Why?" questions (even though I still get exasperated if I can't figure out the answer quickly enough), the development of characters, and the scribbling down of scenes I'll incorporate into the next draft, along with any funny lines or cool names I happen to think up.

The re-writing is the hard part, of course. Although, having taken a long break on Violet's Monster: Volume I, I am glad to be getting back to it.

I was also reading this morning - I found some "Plotting Novels" websites and combed through them for any helpful information (I don't think I plot like many other people...maybe it will be easier once I've written half a dozen books??), and I found a quote by someone, which said that a beginning writer must write a million words before they have what it takes to write a good novel.

I'm not sure how true that is, but it seemed rather daunting until I remembered all the NaNoWriMo and ScriptFrenzy and summer writing that I've done. Totaling it all up and averaging it on the low side, I've written over 250,000 words (and I didn't count my blog posts, Facebook status updates, letters written to friends/e-mails, or journaling - I just put in my novels, short stories, scripts, and poems). Which is 1/4 of a million words. Whew.

So in an attempt to reach the million words, there will be a graveyard of novels (already have a dozen short stories in there and a couple novels), a host of rejection letters, and some very late nights and some very sore wrists.

But I'm game - I ADORE the challenges of NaNoWriMo and ScriptFrenzy, and I also want to try the poem-a-day challenge...so, here goes. 3/4 of a million words to go.