Checking in for ROW80 again.  I’ll be doing weekly check-ins on Wednesdays rather than Wednesdays and Sundays.  It gets to be too much for me doing them twice a week.  But I do have things to report since Sunday.

I couldn’t seem to get my footing in the new story, so I sat down and wrote about that. And I realized that I don’t have an antagonist!  I have forces of nature that work against my MC, but that’s not the same as having something actively working against her.  I know there are stories where the antagonist is a force of nature, but I never feel really satisfied with those, so I don’t want to write one.

I’m currently doing a lot of discovery writing to learn more about my MC, more about the world I want, and to try to ferret out an antagonist for her.  This is working out a lot better for me.  I was trying to jump into the story without doing any planning, just to see what happens, and I know now that isn’t for me.

I was remembering back in my early writing days that I used to sit down to write with a general idea and a character and just go for pages.  I don’t know if the difference now is that I don’t have the time I used to for just writing randomly or if my brain works differently now.  Maybe it’s because I used to know a lot more about my character before I started writing, and this time I didn’t have more than that she’s a professor who got tangled up in the opening of the veil between here and Faery.  Whatever the reason, I know I need a lot more info before I’m ready for really writing the story.

I’m going to dedicate the first part of this round to writing about my character, writing scenes that come to me, and working on outlining.  I’m hoping I’ll be ready for actual story writing about mid-August.  Meanwhile, I’m sticking with my goal of three writing sessions a week (I did one this week already).

That’s where I am in my writing just now–sending myself back to the beginning to do the work and get unstuck.  Where are you in your writing?

An invitation: 

I started a Facebook group to talk about writing practice (writing for writing’s sake, not always about story) and building our writing lives the way we want them to be.  It’s a place to share resources and struggles and triumphs.  It’s also a place where I’m going to ask for volunteers to test out classes and programs I create for MuseCraft.  If you are interested in exploring your writing life and where writing fits in outside of creating stories (and within it, too), please join us:

Wild Minds Writers