Rebecca Monahan: Too Many Words

So I finally finished typing up what I had, and I am glad that I didn't decide to wait till I had written more. It took me forever to type up three chapters, anymore than that and I think I would've burned everything I had with my story.

Even though it took me forever to get it typed up, I am happy now that I get to see my word count again, and pages too. I'm at 130 pages!!! I feel like I get more and more excited as I keep writing this story. I hit some snags every once in a while, but I take a break from from writing and then when I get back into it, I can keep moving like I had never hit a wall in the first place.

My inner-editor is starting to get to me though. I want to go back and start editing what I have, you know the huge change of Third Person POV to First Person, but I know if I start that I'll never finish writing, considering I'd have to completely rewrite oh about everything I have except maybe 10,000 words which is not a comforting thought at all. So to keep him in check, I've printed out the first couple of chapters so that when I finish writing, I can go right into editing. It is nice seeing my work printed out. It makes me feel like I have accomplished something, which in all reality, compared to how much I normally write, I HAVE.

Before I found out about NANOWRIMO, I wrote a little at time. Sometimes a lot at a time, but then because I never gave myself a goal, I dropped the story. Right now I have three different sets of notebooks filled up with a story, abandoned. I kind of feel bad for my one story, considering I started it ten years ago. Eventually I might go back to it, or it just might sit there for a long long time. The other two are newer and they will be my next projects, at least the one because I think it'll be pretty awesome because it's something that I've never seen done in a book before. Well sort of, but it'll be with my own twist.

BUT before I can get to that one, I need to finish this one. As of right now I'm giving myself a deadline. I'm going to do everything I can to finish this story by the end of February. Which shouldn't be too bad considering I'm just about to get to the climax of the story. Yeah it's taken me oh about 62,000 words, but I needed to set up everything. I needed to know my characters, and they did give me a few surprises along the way. But that's what I like about writing. When I read, I pick up on the foreshadowing that the writer's use and I'm just along for the ride as the main character figures it out. As a writer, I'm right there with the MC, trying to figure out right from wrong. I make the same mistakes. It's all one big surprise to me. I don't like outlining what's going to happen. I just let it happen. I let my characters make their own choices. And every once in a while, I get thrown a curve ball.

My two curve balls for this story shocked me… a lot, and I laughed both times. The first was a complete shocker, I had already introduced my MC brother, but it wasn't until a few chapters later that I realized it wasn't just her brother, but her TWIN!!! I mean come on, how did I not know that before hand. When that popped out of one of the character's mouth, my jaw dropped and I knew that I already had one thing I needed to change.

The other, I kind of saw coming. I made my character like to read, what her taste is haven't found that out yet, but I know it's not Shakespeare. Then just the other day, my MC best friend asked for homework help in math. I was slightly shocked but knew there was a chance for this since she hated English class. My only worry is I actually write something about math that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!! And yes they did all have to be in Caps because I hate math. I don't get it and never will. They only thing I know is that I have a lame Pi joke in my story. I laughed when I wrote it because it was that lame.

So now that I've updated to what I've been doing this last week, I'll leave you with four of my writing distractions!

Pepper