Rambles on Writing

There have been so many thoughts going through my mind recently about writing and my writing journey, so this probably isn’t really going to be a post about Enhanced like I was planning for it to be. (But that’s okay, one of my February dares was to blog what I want to, so I will.) But I will give you a status update on it! And hopefully a post about it soon.

Current Word Count: About 38,350-ish. The exact count should be on the sidebar. Which is about 32% of my goal. I think that’s around where the plot is…*shrugs*

But the problem is that I’m starting to get bored of it… I love my characters and talking about them, but right now I feel like the plot is really…suffering. I mean, I have a plot, but it’s not very prevalent, and the whole book is very character-heavy so far without much action. The first draft of Enhanced was basically the opposite–all action and no character development, so I know I need to find a balance between the two.

The thing is, I’m not sure how long it will take me to find that balance. Do I work on developing that for a little while instead of actually writing so that I can try to fix it, or do I finish this draft because I want to finish it and move onto other things? Don’t get me wrong, I still love the novel, I just…I’m tired of it, like I said.

Another problem is that I’m not sure how to fix it. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually, but I don’t know how to get to that point without totally changing the plot and maybe even the characters again. I thought I’d had the right plot this time, but now, writing it, it seems way too character-heavy…but maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be…gah, I don’t know.

So because of that, I’m instead working on this really dark short story that I started a long time ago with lots of characters who are devious and murder each other. Fun, right? I do enjoy it, but I keep adding more characters and it’s getting longer and longer…already it’s over 15 pages… *nervous laughter*

But when I finish that, I’ll be looking for some people to read it and tell me what they think about it, so if you like the sound of it, then keep that in mind. (Of course, I could procrastinate on the story again for a few months and not come back to it for a while, so don’t get too excited.)

And then…well, I decided to get over my fear of sharing my writing with my family and share some of my novels with my dad to read. So I gave him a list with a little summary of each of them and he decided he wanted to read Raven, my very first novel.

And it just so happened to end up that sometime around chapter five, he started reading it out loud to both me and my younger brother. At first, I was a little bothered, but I love listening to him read, and he did such a great Kergan voice that I couldn’t help but let him keep going…

By a few chapters later, when he told us it was time for bed, my brother kept calling it “that amazing novel” even though he knew the name of it, and my dad said to me, “You know, this is first draft stuff and he’s saying that it’s amazing. That means you could probably start publishing for children really soon.”

I started to say, “I don’t want to publish for children,” thinking about Enhanced, but then my words were cut off as another thought came into my head–the idea I had for a middle grade novel about dragons that I had wanted to write for my little brother specifically.

And I do want to write it. I always knew Raven, despite it being my first novel and not that great in some ways, had a vibrancy and excitement about it that I’ve never been able to replicate…and I guess I feel that if I write that dragon book, for children, then it’ll bring some of that back. And, you know, the thought of publishing soon isn’t bad either.

So I’m in a bit of a quandary (I’ve been wanting to use that word for days now…). I want to finish Enhanced but I don’t want to work on it, in part because it seems actionless and has too much character development, especially when compared to a novel written for middle grade.

I’m thinking about writing the MG dragon novel for Camp NaNo in April since it should be shorter and I might actually be able to finish it in a month…so I think I might do that. Which means I should keep working on Enhanced, but the question is, should I keep writing or try to figure out what core elements need to be changed and…I don’t know, start rewriting it again?

Ugh, I don’t want to rewrite it again. Maybe there being too much character stuff isn’t a bad thing…? I think I might need someone to read what I have so far in order to tell me that. Any volunteers?

*headdesks* Any opinions, advice, comments, etc. are most appreciated since I’d love for help with this problem. Thanks for reading all of my complaining…hopefully next post will be much better and happier!