Writing update

I think I may have just made a big mistake.

I did not realise that writing would consume so much of me and that it would be so very exciting and addictive.

It's like reading a book you can't put down except that you get to decide where the book turns every step of the way. Since I did not write any sort of outline and have no idea what the storyline is going to be, the characters and events take a life of their own while I'm writing.

I've spent the last two nights writing after my family fell to sleep and that was once again a big mistake. After I stopped writing, my mind was still so active with so many ideas and stories I wanted to put down, and I would toss and turn on the bed for another two hours before finally falling asleep.

So for two nights, I've been on my laptop from 10pm to 2am, meaning I would only fall to sleep close to 4am. Put this together with a fussy, sick baby who also woke up a few times in the night at her own timing, and you get a very, very sleepy father.

Some things I've discovered while writing:

• I'm terrible at writing dialogue. My writing is too descriptive and depicting a realistic, natural conversation is not currently part of my capability.
• Dry, witty humour doesn't fit very well with a fantasy medieval Tolkien world. To my memory, only Pratchett has been able to do it relatively successfully.
• Similar to my dialogue writing capabilities, romance is another facet I think I should avoid for now. My lovely wife looked over my shoulder, read a paragraph where a man was thinking about his spouse and told me, "It's kinda corny". Once again, she demonstrates her incredible skills of encouragement.
• I love my ideas and how the story is taking shape. More than once, I've thought to myself that if I read a well-written novel with this storyline, I would be very engaged and not be able to put it down. The only problem is that I don't know how to find the write words to bring the ideas to life as this is my first attempt.
• I need to work on my character development. I think that I do a passable job of describing events and situations but don't know how to make the main characters more relatable.
• Describing battle sequences are so, so fun. I can make it as gory and bloody as I want, and I'm loving it so much that I wonder if I'm secretly psychopathic underneath.
• I tend to over-write and over-elaborate, as evidenced by this blog. But since my target is the 20,000 words by end November, I'll only cut it down after I finish the writing the first draft.

In two long, grueling nights, I've written the prologue and two chapters amounting to 8,000 words. I have made up my mind not to go back and edit anything until I've finished the first draft completely from start to finish because if not, I will never finish it.

The question is whether I should continue at this point; it's really taking too much out of me and I know my life will be significantly out of balance if I continue. But if the end result is something I can be proud of, this is something I definitely want to follow through on.

What should I do?

Categories: Writing