All Quiet on the Writing Front

Things have been quiet on the writing front for the last few days, but I had no work today which has allowed Stella some time to get her groove back. Yeah that's right, I sometimes refer to myself in the third person as Stella. I'm working a lot of early morning shifts this week at my day job, normally I adjust pretty well to getting up at five in the morning but these last few days it's been knocking me on my ass. I'm getting too old for this shit.

I'm starting to think i've seen too many movies.

So I mentioned a couple of posts back that I was going to be working on the following three writing goals;

1. Writing an outline of the first act
2. Writing an unplanned conversation for about two hours between a couple of characters
3. Writing a mission statement for myself defining what I think wholeness means so that it can inform where my story is headed toward in the third act.

I didn't work anymore on my outline today. I'm up to the point with that where Emily is about to meet the fairy for the first time and I feel woefully uninformed about how I want that scene to play out, so I think I need to do a little research on faeries and gnomes before I move forward plotting that bit.

I sat for an hour and a half writing a conversation between Emily and her Aunt (and to a lesser extent her Uncle). The premise for the conversation was that it was the first sit down talk she'd had with the Aunt since moving into her house. To begin with it was pretty boring, awkward and painful stuff. I had no plan in doing this exercise beyond seeing what would come out of it naturally and for the first fourty five minutes it felt like it really was going nowhere. Then the Uncle, who was in the background of the scene, started to take shape a little bit and then something started to flow between Emily and her Aunt. The Aunt started to reveal herself as a blunt yet warm personality who has a fascination with the meaning of words. This fascination with words and meaning starts to impart on Emily a little as well.

Finally I wrote a brief statement of what I think wholeness might mean. In the end I came away with four points that I think will help drive this story towards a conclusion. Although I have started to see how these points will relate to story specifics, for now i'm going to keep that to myself. The four points in general terms are;

1. Shed false beliefs about self. (This idea has helped me shape an important part of Emily's character that was missing before today)

2. Take responsibility for your own choices. (The universal existential realisation)

3. Forgive parents

4. Find best version of true self (I'm working on the theory here that everyone has a deeper true self that drives or haunts them, but even acting on any gifts that stem from this true self can still lead to a good or dark place depending on the choices you make.)

So another small step forward has been taken. So now i've got some more short-term goals for myself.

1. Do some research on faeries & gnomes
2. Blog about the next chapter of Vogler's book (I've missed doing this. I needed a break but now i'm keen to get back into it)
3. Start a second blog as a sideline project. This has nothing to do with the novel but stemmed from an idea that a friend of mine gave me. This will be another specifically themed blog that i'll explain once i've got it set up. The reason to do this is because I believe I should be doing as much writing as possible and this will be a way to practise writing anecdotal short narratives which all goes toward making a better writer of myself.