Simply put: Writer's Block.
Lately I've been more than a little pre-occupied with other aspects of my life, and sadly writing has taken a back seat to most of it. It's not that my creativity hasn't been flowing, in fact, I've come up with some amazing stories, plots and characters in the past couple months while this blog has been waiting for me to get back to it. What I've been struggling with is my focus.
I desperately want to focus on the 1st book of my trilogy, but every time I pick up the first draft to edit it, and re write it, I just stare at the work, as I'm overcome by it. Editing is a daunting task to begin with, but when I set out to rewrite it, it became harder to get enthused, because I kept writing the same story.
I knew I wanted to change the original, something was missing, but I couldn't figure out what it was so that I could add it, or subtract it and change the make up of the book.
It wasn't until today, after being thoroughly upset that I wasn't actually changing anything but wording from my 1st draft to my second that I realized one of the key factors that I had reservations about, and to my surprise it was my antagonist.
The antagonist of my 1st novel is the creation of my elementary school self who didn't understand the politics of love and war, and only saw the cut and dry Good vs Evil of many beloved animated films. My antagonist had no reason for being who she was, she also had no reason for being in the story at all- she was there because "all stories need a villain".
So, I spent the day recreating her. I spun a web of drama surrounding her creation, her upbringing and entwined it with the history of the country, religions and characters I'd already developed in the story. At the end of the day my antagonist was a ghost of her former character, and still thin as a skeleton compared to most other antagonists, (she still needs a lot of work) but I had found something that I was missing; a whole story. Now all of my characters have motivations, reasons for being and doing what I've written them to do, instead of doing things because I thought it sounded cool, no, they all have a purpose, and their story has a reason for being told.
Once again, I am excited to tell this story and can't wait to finish writing it so I can share it with anyone who will read it.
-Brandolyn
[my word counts haven't changed on the computer, but I have a few more journals full of notes and new chapters from various stories and story lines but I am unable to guesstimate my current word counts. I will update my counts when I transfer my notes to the computer!]
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