Yesterday, I bought a proverb calendar. I thought it might be interesting and inspiring for story writing. I realize half the year is over and that it seems silly to buy a 2014 calendar now, but sometimes I'm silly.
Today's proverb is, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
In other words, instead of spending life wishing something was better, come up with an action plan to make it better. You are in control of your own happiness.
For some people, that might be scary, but not all things require huge amounts of effort or commitment, at least at the start.
Take a journey, for example. What does a journey begin with? One step.
A novel? One word.
Of course, before you know it, another word happens. Then another. Suddenly you have a sentence, a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, another chapter, more chapters, a first draft, etc.
I'm at the more chapters stage with my first novel and all the while climbing closer to a first draft. It's a jumble of hair-pulling excitement, self-induced insanity, soul-rending frustration, and periodic delirium. Writing a novel means constant decision-making, cursing myself for the problems I've created that I now need to solve, and philosophizing about whether my character would do/say/know anything.
This makes descriptive text challenging. I have a scene where my character is walking down a hallway on a spaceship. I've decided the walls look like apologia. Given that my character is from another planet, even if they know what apologia is and looks like, it's probably not called apologia on their planet. This means I have to describe it entirely based on appearance. Why don't I just say the walls were blue? It's not interesting. Besides, would you rather see a plain blue wall on a spaceship or something that reminds you of some kind of biological organism? It's a friggin' spaceship!
So ignore all my banter if you're just starting out. One step. One word. That's all you need to get going. Take a chance and let me know how it goes.
Ciao,
R~
Today's proverb is, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
In other words, instead of spending life wishing something was better, come up with an action plan to make it better. You are in control of your own happiness.
For some people, that might be scary, but not all things require huge amounts of effort or commitment, at least at the start.
Take a journey, for example. What does a journey begin with? One step.
A novel? One word.
Of course, before you know it, another word happens. Then another. Suddenly you have a sentence, a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, another chapter, more chapters, a first draft, etc.
I'm at the more chapters stage with my first novel and all the while climbing closer to a first draft. It's a jumble of hair-pulling excitement, self-induced insanity, soul-rending frustration, and periodic delirium. Writing a novel means constant decision-making, cursing myself for the problems I've created that I now need to solve, and philosophizing about whether my character would do/say/know anything.
This makes descriptive text challenging. I have a scene where my character is walking down a hallway on a spaceship. I've decided the walls look like apologia. Given that my character is from another planet, even if they know what apologia is and looks like, it's probably not called apologia on their planet. This means I have to describe it entirely based on appearance. Why don't I just say the walls were blue? It's not interesting. Besides, would you rather see a plain blue wall on a spaceship or something that reminds you of some kind of biological organism? It's a friggin' spaceship!
So ignore all my banter if you're just starting out. One step. One word. That's all you need to get going. Take a chance and let me know how it goes.
Ciao,
R~