Writing Blues

Okay, so three months are nearly up (that's the length of time I originally gave myself to find out if I could really write or not) and its evaluation-time for me. So far, I've written around 21K for an aborted version of Harper and another 23K for Harper Reloaded. The thing is, after my so-called epiphany, I rushed blindly into the story again and though I came up with much more action and originality than I thought I was capable of, things sort of started to fizzle out about the end of Chapter 4...meaning I started running out of ideas - sounds familiar to me because that's exactly what happened with Harper version 1 before I decided to drop it and start over.

Somehow I seem to hit a standstill as soon as I hit 20K words, like my well of ideas suddenly dries up. But that doesn't mean that I'm dropping this version like the previous one because the thing is...I think it has potential. I want to make this work. Badly. I know that my plot isn't developed enough. This time round, I've got a rough sketch of a plot and though it's not brilliant or even particularly clever, there are ideas floating around there that need to be explored. So I'm not going to give up on this one just yet.

Meanwhile, I've stumbled on ideas that are not related to the current story that I'm writing - they are usually related to other stories I'll be working on as soon as I finish Harper Reloaded, so I just file away those ideas in their relevant folders as they occur to me. It's just one of those weird things that happen when you write - a line from a character in another story just strolls around in your head and you just have to write it down, irrespective of whether you'll use it in the actual story or not.

I'm trying to take it one story at a time - though sometimes its tempting, very tempting to switch to another story and put what you're currently working on, on hold - for the simple reason that I don't want to mix up the voices of my main characters from different stories, especially since I tend to write in first person. From experience, I know that's very easy to do if I give in to the urge of hopping between stories.

For the record, I've been kind of slow on the writing front with Harper Reloaded - I haven't written more than three thousand words this past month and I feel very guilty. But maybe, just maybe if I can push past the 20K roadblock and stick with the story like glue, I can make it to 30K, then 40K and so on, till I make it to the finish line.