And Now What?

(This may be a rambly sort of post. I'm making it up as I go along.)

So, NaNoWriMo. Yeah, it was fun. I wrote just over 30,000 words, meeting my target while still managing to keep on top of all my coursework and stuff. Pretty good, overall, and I managed to bring a plot from half-baked idea to completed story in a month. Which begs the question, where to next?

I'd like to start editing and working into my NaNo story (yes, it is untitled, just like almost everything I write). But then I thought, well, I've been writing nothing but that one story for a whole month. Ditto with my notebook story, as the two are very interconnected. I am just a bit tired of both of them now. I can hear Prototype agitating for a re-read and edit session, and I have a new story in my head which sounds good when I think about it, but to make the plot work properly it would be quite boring to write at first. And I don't want to set myself word targets and things for a while any more. So that's out for now.

The other thing I may take up again is something that I have tried on and off for many, many years and have never quite gotten the hang of: I speak of the realm of poetry. I love poetry, in fact I love it even more when I get to take it apart and see how it works. We're doing that a lot at school right now. And one of my characters that I have spent a lot of time with over the past two months or so just happens to be a very talented poet. I'd really like to have a go at ghostwriting some poetry for him, but I'm quite scared of accidentally creating toxic naffness. This is the usual result of my forays into verse. Hmmmm.

I reckon the notebook story can take a break for now. I have writer's block on it anyway; I can't figure out how the next bit of plot can be connected to what I have. Instead, I will start attempting to improve my poetic abilities. And Prototype will need revisiting otherwise I'll never get rid of the itch. Right. That's my writing life sorted, at least until Christmas.

How's yours?

Musings on Angst

It's been a while since I had anything to say about writing. In fact, its been a while since I wanted to write about anything other than how much I hate my life, which is quite irrational given that I'm having a great time.

But after the past couple of weeks of midterms, problem sets, papers and purposeless angst, I've realized what might help with the angst. I'm going to start writing again, not little short stories that I can't do a thing with. I'm going to start a new novel. Hopefully instead of thinking in circles about my angst, I will delve into a labyrinth in my head to create my characters angst.

It's going to be a space opera centered around a ship's doctor and the first contact Earth has with the rest of the intelligent universe. I hope to write about 5,000 words a week on it, and that they be air tight words. I will try to post updates on the blog here, and my series on style is on hold for a while (if anyone hadn't figured that out yet, and cared).