Fall is my favorite season and October marks the true beginning of Fall (my personal opinion) and with Halloween coming up so quickly, I decided to do something different for this month’s Traveling Thursdays post. I hope you enjoy these beautiful yet eerie photos of an abandoned house not too far away from where I live.
If you’ve been following my “Writing Logs” you may have wondered why I haven’t posted the latest one yet. Here’s a bit of an explanation.
So, I haven’t been writing because I’ve become frustrated with my story. I don’t hate my story. I love it. I haven’t jumped ship or anything like that, I’ve just grown frustrated because I realized that I started the story too early. I’m an over writer—that has always been my problem which is why I didn’t freak out at the idea of writing an 85,000 word novel in 3 months. I thought it would be a fun challenge but now I’m just sitting here frustrated because I’ve come to the conclusion that my first act is dragging on. It’s not boring but I’m also aware that a lot of this information can be cut down and told in a more engaging way to make sure my pacing stays in a good range. If I shorten the first act, everything moves faster. The only problem is, that would mean a rewrite is coming.
I should wait until the second draft to fix it all but the fact is, I have to get through the first act in my current outline; I still have two more chapters to get through. That’s about 8k more words/2 more weeks of writing something I know I’m going to cut and rewrite. I’m frustrated. I love this story so much because it’s helping me work through a lot of internal emotional turmoil I’m dealing with right now and I don’t want to give up on it. Sigh.
A while back I made a post about my yo-yoing weight and how I wanted to make a permanent change because I was tired of how my life was going. It’s been a few months now and I wanted to give you all an update.
It’s important to note that I have severe scoliosis—it just isn’t obvious—so my workouts are a bit limited. My limitations come in when I’m dealing with weights. I’ve been advised by a few doctors not to lift weights so my workouts usually consist of toning exercises (basic Pilates and resistance training with a resistance band) and cardio. I can do the Pilates and resistance training at home because I have yoga mats, medicine balls, exercise balls, kettlebells, small dumb bells, and several sets of resistance bands. But the one thing I can not do at home is the cardio because I hate running. So for the cardio, I was going to the gym and using the elliptical for an hour, four times a week.
This went on for about a month and a half before I lost my motivation and gave up. But wait, don’t roll your eyes just yet, let me explain. I lost my motivation because even though I was slowly slimming down I was losing a lot of muscle. Yeah, you see, I’d actually stopped doing the Pilates and resistance training and was focusing my time on the cardio because that’s all I had time for and it was working. But because I wasn’t toning my body, I lost a lot of the muscle I had in my core and ended up looking flappier than before. A good example of this is the fact that I am smaller than I was when I made the original post but I now have “love handles” because my stomach isn’t as firm as it used to be. Once I realized what was happening, I tried to correct my error but it was already too late. I’d lost some fat that used to sit around my tailbone area and because it wasn’t there to cushion me, getting down on the floor and doing the moves I used to do became painful. My tailbone and spine began to take on too much pressure and it became really painful. So I just stopped altogether.
I didn’t lose or gain any more weight until I went to Texas in the beginning of August. While I was down in Texas, I stayed with a family that was on a diet and I didn’t want to be rude so I ate what they ate and their portion sizes and I actually lost weight. I probably lost about four or five pounds over the span of two weeks just from eating better but because I don’t diet, the moment I got back to St. Louis I ate everything that I’d literally been dreaming about and gained the weight back.
This was around the time my brother became an inspirational figure to me. My fourteen-year-old brother has always been skinny and as he’s gotten older, he has also gotten taller. He has the same body type as our dad. He’s naturally skinny but with him growing so much, he was starting to look slender. He didn’t want to be slender going into high school so for the past month and a half, he’s been going to the gym and working out. Over this short amount of time, I’ve seen him put on muscle and start sculpting his body into the image he wanted. It was easy for him because he was already skinny, all he had to do was put on the muscle. But, just from watching my own friends try, I also know how hard it is to put on muscle and he’s done it all without taking supplements or drinking protein shakes or anything like that. He just eats up everything now, but I get it. He’s hungry, so I can’t really get mad at him for cleaning out the fridge. But watching him get abs, rounded shoulders, and develop the muscles in his back and pectoral region really inspired me to get back in the gym and on the yoga mat.
I know I can make a difference before the year ends.
Today was a pretty good writing day. I hit 1k before sunset and I created a character and subplot that was unplanned. The only reason it’s staying in the story is because it helps me fill in my main character’s back-story without a whole bunch of exposition and the character will help me wrap up one of the larger storylines. It’s great when that happens. I killed two birds with one stone and the character is a fun character to write because she can be used to show what the world looks like from the perspective of someone who is not part of the main plot.
Total Word Count: 13,586
Today was my first day back at work. I work evenings and nights so I decided to write in the morning. I feel that it’s important to note that I’m not a morning person so actually getting words on the screen was hard but once I got going, everything seemed to flow.
Total Word Count: 14,859
My brain and my hands needed a rest day.
Total Word Count: 14,859
So, after I wrote the sentence above, I shut down my computer and tried to fall asleep but I couldn’t. So I turned my computer back on and started making changes to one of my central characters. For the past few days, I’ve been trying to decide on whether to use a Western name or an Eastern name for an Asian character I’ve been developing. It took two hours for me to decide to switch the name from a Western name to a more ethnic name. Because I’d stayed up to like 4 a.m. doing this, when I finally fell asleep, I slept hard. I actually overslept and ended up waking up really close to the time I had to leave for work. I rushed out of the house, trying to make sure I wouldn’t be late, only to realize I was actually an hour early. So, I went back home and wrote for about 20 minutes and then went to work. I couldn’t work on my story during my break because I am training a new employee.
Total Word Count: 15,044
Work is killing my writing time.
Total Word Count: 15,209
I wrote for one hour and 15 minutes before going to work. On my break, I couldn’t focus enough to work on my novel but I did start working on a blog post that I will publish probably four days after this writing log is published.
Total Word Count: 15,908
Today was a productive day. I learned all about wood burning stoves because I wrote a scene that took place in a kitchen where someone had recently cooked. I used some advice from a video about World Building. I have a multicultural cast of characters existing in one location (much like the USA but on a smaller scale) so there is bound to be some differences between the ethnic groups and sub-cultures. But my world exists in a future in which the past has been largely (and forcefully) forgotten or ignored and the countries that used to exist are long gone. I’ve been struggling to describe people ethnically or racially without using terms that people in the story wouldn’t use because they are irrelevant to them and without using harmful stereotypes. So, thanks to the video I came up with the idea to use small bits and pieces of a culture to try to reinforce what I might be alluding to and it works great with the idea that these things were at some point, part of the culture but has been watered down over the decades as people were forced to assimilate as history was covered up.
So although my story is set in the future it is still a dark fantasy set in a medieval-ish pre-industrialized world because it is easier to control people in a world where the spread of information is slow and technology has regressed. I can honestly say that a lot of the ideas I’ve put into my world are the things that are happening around me. The idea of having the erasure of history become a running theme as well as part of my world building came from what is happening in the U.S. There are states, mostly southern, that are erasing important parts of U.S. history such as the reasons why the U.S. civil war started and the U.S. involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Angry parents have been posting their children’s syllabi and textbooks, highlighting areas of the text stating that the enslaved Africans were immigrants who immigrated to the colonies. And there have even been passages from textbooks that talk about the U.S. civil war as being a war over property versus a war over the right to keep enslaved human beings as property.
Everyday things happening in the U.S. have influenced how I’ve built my fantastical world. The rise in conservative influences in government helped shape my religious and political systems and the tension between the two institutes. Race relations both present and historical helped me write the history of the world and explain why there is tension between the Enhanced and the humans and even the level of classism displayed within the Enhanced species.
So, the big take away from this is everything you encounter in life can help you build a believable world. People say write what you know and that’s what I did. Even though my major plots are very fantastical, the blood and bones of this world are heavily grounded in the world we live in and I hope that whoever reads my book takes the time to reflect on some of the real world issues presented in it.
Total Word Count: 17,781
I finally finished that scene I’ve been working on for the past week. Lucky for me, it reads pretty fast but it took forever to write.
Total Word Count: 9,311
I didn’t even open my document.
Total Word Count: 9,311
I realized that I wrote a scene that isn’t in chronological order and it wasn’t a flashback. I should probably fix that.
Total Word Count: 9,311
I actually wrote today. So, first, let me explain the last few days. I’ve been binge-watching a television show. I covered 28 hours worth of footage over the span of three days. But anyway, I finished the show so I’m back to writing. You know how you create all of these really cool things and then you have to figure out what they look like. That’s where I’m at right now. I created a world that isn’t set in a particular historical setting so now I’m constantly trying to mix and match my ideas with things that actually exist because I’m such a visual person. I wrote for about an hour and spent two hours learning about the different parts of the uniforms clergy wear and learning about medieval and ancient armor. I’m starting to lean towards leather armor because it fits in with my world visually, it looks cool and it’s pretty functional although it’s not the safest compared to metal. So, I’m thinking about placing metal armor only on certain characters to show their rank.
“I love doing all of this research on things that I’ll never use in real life,” I say sarcastically. One day, I learned about ancient sewer systems, toilets, and how to generate power in an age without electricity. Another day I spent five hours learning about medieval and ancient kitchens—how they worked, how they looked, and what was in them. Being a writer is the reason I know so many random facts, I swear.
Total Word Count: 9,980
I’m sick because my brother got my mom sick and she got me sick, although she’s blaming him for getting me sick. Anyway, I didn’t write anything today, but I did do some world building. Now that I’m actually writing, some of the ideas I had for the world have either changed a little to better fit the story or they have become fleshed out. I worked on my mythology a bit and worked on descriptions of clothing worn by soldiers and members of the Cloth (religious figures).
Total Word Count: 9,980
I watched TV all day.
Total Word Count: 9,980
I watched Korean television again because apparently, I don’t care about my deadline.
Total Word Count: 9,980
I can’t write in my room right now so I’ve been trying to write in the living room. When I sat down to write, everyone decided they wanted to have long conversations with me. I kept trying to write but by the end of it, I was no longer in the mood.
Total Word Count: 10,114
Television and the chores that come with adulthood took up my writing time today. But let’s be honest, I’m also procrastinating for some reason.
Total Word Count: 10,114
For the past week, I’ve been binge-watching Korean dramas for some reason. They’re entertaining and distracting and whenever I go through internal struggles, I always search for distractions. Usually, I just throw myself into my writing but this time I chose TV. I’ve finished four dramas with running times of 1 hour and 5 minutes per episode with anywhere between 16—24 episodes per drama. I’ve been watching a lot of TV.
I went back and read my story from the beginning so I could keep the same tone throughout the work. Plus, I needed to jog my memory on what has already happened.
Total Word Count: 10,468
Didn’t even open the document.
Total Word Count: 10,468
I wanted to write today but I ended up spending most of the day doing some online training for my job. I also had the sniffles so I took some cold medicine and went to sleep early.
Total Word Count: 10,468
I actually wrote words. Yay. These past two weeks have been weird. I haven’t been able to write. Like even when I sat down, the words just wouldn’t flow. And it wasn’t like I had writer’s block. I knew what I was supposed to write I just couldn’t. It was weird but I’m so glad whatever that was, has passed. I only had about 30 minutes to write today but tomorrow I’m pretty sure my word count will jump back up to its normal 1k.
I’m a month into this project—nowhere near where I should be word count wise—but I finally feel like I’m writing a book. It wasn’t until today that I slipped back into my standard literary style of writing. Yes, that means this whole time I’ve been writing the book the same way I would write a screenplay. Not format wise but style wise. It wasn’t until I looked over what I wrote today that I realized the reason my other stuff felt so dry (not boring just dry) was because it wasn’t as full as literary works can be. It was bare in the same fashion that screenplays have to be due to the limited amount of pages available. So later on, when I’m bored, I’ll go back and fix the first three and a half chapters but for now, I’m just glad to be writing again.
Total Word Count: 11,080
I wrote words two days in a row. I guess it is just like walking. You have to put one foot in front of the other in order to get anywhere.
Total Word Count: 12,264
I didn’t even open my document today. But can we all appreciate that Game of Thrones season finale? It was great.
Total Word Count: 6,747.
I wrote a little. I’m not un-inspired, I’m just sleepy for some reason. I worked on a smaller scene today and enjoyed how eerie it was. I’m starting to develop the dark undertones of what the Dream World (the barrier between different planes) is like. It’s definitely not the kind of place you want to wander around in by yourself.
Total Word Count: 7,504
I didn’t do any actual writing but I did do some plotting. I have a seven-page outline for this book but I’m super detail oriented. To explain better, I’ll tell you how I outline my screenplays. My screenplays run around 90 to 120 pages. My outlines for my screenplays are super detailed (because the beats for the scenes are included) and they usually run around 7 pages. My novel is probably going to be around 80-85k words. I’ve never tried to outline a book because all the ones I’ve written before have been pantsed. This one is planned and I’m still developing a way to outline this project. I tried for a few months to outline the book the same way I outline films and it didn’t work. I kept getting hung up on what to write next because of how big the project is. So I decided to use the same format I do my screenplays in, just not as detailed. That’s how I ended up with my current outline.
It tells me the beginning, middle, and end of my story. This outline also has the key plot points, subplots and character arks integrated into the overall story. I have three central characters so I had to figure out how to outline their journeys in order to make sure all three characters progressed. Today, I took some time to basically plan out the beats per chapter. I think doing the outline this way made it manageable and by the end of the first draft, my outline for this book will look like my outlines for my screenplays.
I’m realizing I may be too organized.
Total Word Count: 7,504
I actually wrote words in the document today. Woohoo! After yesterday I was inspired to do something very stupid. I’m rewriting my prologue and first chapter. You know that sinking feeling you get as you write something that you know you’re going to have to rewrite later on down the road but you’re trying to push through and finish a project. That has been me this whole time. I have one scene that I feel is great. The rest of it is word vomit that barely explained what I was trying to express. So today, I took it upon myself to give in to my inner editor and re-write the problem areas. I completely rewrote the prologue and now it is so kick ass. And I’m currently working on the first chapter again to make it awesome as well.
I know, I should have left the inner editor in the dark hole it was in but it was really bothering me that my writing was so bad. And what made it worse was the fact that the events that happen in the prologue are super important and would be retold over and over again in the book from different character perspectives. So every time I was going back to fact check the prologue I was seeing how horrible it was. Today I wrote 2,025 words. Before this is done, I’ll probably write an additional 4 thousand words and then I’ll delete the older versions of the scenes. So when my word count suddenly plunges, you’ll know why. As of right now, I have my chapters broken down into scenes and I label each scene using numbers: Scene 1, Scene 2, etc. but now I have scenes named Scene 1.2. Also, I’m so close to the 10k mark. Too bad I’m going to lose so many words once I cut the older scenes. What type of writing hell is this?
Total Word Count: 9,529
Sad day. I started cutting scenes. I would like to say that before I started cutting I’d made it to 11,283 words. My new word count is listed below. I’m sad now but it had to be done. I’ll probably reach 10k on day 14—two weeks after I started writing.
Total Word Count: 7,699
I decided to give myself a rest day, plus, I’m still bummed out about losing so many words.
Total Word Count: 7,699
I only wrote a little bit and I realized why my writing has slowed. This is the first “summer” I’ve had in four years. And when I say “summer” I mean duty-free summer—childhood-like summer. I’ve been enjoying this little two-week vacation from adult life but I know after Labor Day, adulthood is going to come crashing in and it’ll be back to schedules and work. The sad part is my word count will probably go up once I start working because I’ll have a set time for when I can write. Until then, I’ll be enjoying life. I am sad that I missed my goal for this week. I was hoping to hit 10k this week but it’ll probably happen on Monday or Tuesday.
Total Word Count: 8,204
Last night I finished my seven-page outline in under three hours. I was so excited about this project. I thought that when I woke up the next morning I would still be excited and ready to write but I wasn’t. I guess I realized I no longer had my lack of an outline to hide behind. Suddenly I realized that this was the first book I was going to actively write with the intent of publication. I guess that frightened me a little bit. So I put off writing until after I watched Game of Thrones. I also had some problems with tense. I thought I was going to write in third person past tense limited and then I kept slipping back into third person present tense limited. I know a lot of people don’t like it but I’m used to writing in present tense. I’ve been writing films in present tense for four years. I guess it’s a little harder to shake than I thought. Prologue complete.
Total Word Count: 1,116
I didn’t get a lot of writing done today although I can say it was much easier to write today than it was yesterday. I guess I was just rusty. The last time I wrote something in a narrative style, it was back in May so I can see how that happened. The Solar Eclipse happened today. That stopped me from writing earlier in the day and then after the eclipse passed, I got a headache and ended up taking a nap. I woke up from the nap a little later than I expected but the headache was gone and I was ready to write. Or so I thought. I ended up having to sit and think about what the city and certain rooms in the story looked like. I ended up looking at lots of pictures to try to match the vagueness in my mind with some real images to help me narrow down what things actually look like because I’m a visual person. But after that, I started writing and really loved it and then I started playing with Scrivener’s compile setting because…why not? I love wasting time. It’s midnight. I’m going to sleep.
Total Word Count: 2,142.
So I thought I was going to get up and write but it was raining and my mom is so paranoid about the rain that I ended up pushing my writing time back. We did laundry today and that took longer than usual but overall today was a pretty good writing day. I also washed my hair today, so that’s a plus. 👍🏾 I think the hardest thing I had to do in regards to writing today was trying to figure out how to describe racial/ethnic markers on people without sounding racist. I never realized how much I relied on generalizations or cultural understanding until I tried to describe a diverse group of people in a world without our established countries and racial categories. I didn’t do as much writing as I wanted to but there is always tomorrow.
Total Word Count: 3,583
Today I actually got up and wrote when I was supposed to. I only wrote for about 45 minutes before I took a break and went to the gym for an hour. When I got back, a laid around for a bit and watched a few YouTube videos before getting back to writing. Things were going well until I spent four hours on Netflix. Chapter 1 complete.
Total Word Count: 4,972.
It was a good writing day, I just didn’t write for very long.
Total Word Count: 6,747.
I picked greens, baked cupcakes, styled my hair and worked on a physical map of my fantasy world. I put off writing because my sister was supposed to bring my nephews and niece over, but in her typical fashion, she broke her promise. I’m going to bed three hours early because I’m irritated and I might have plans tomorrow that requires me to wake up before 8 a.m.
Total Word Count: 6,747
Oops. Not writing for the second day in a row, huh? I’m not trying to justify this, I’m just stating what happened. I had a really busy day. I actually got out of the house and had some fun. My sister also brought the kids over for a few hours and then I got drunk by myself and went to sleep early. It’ll be better next week. I swear.
Total Word Count: 6,747
Tyler B. Humphries 