I’m having a day. Not a bad day, but a day at loose ends, and day in which I feel all over the place. Unhappy in what I’m doing but not sure what I should be doing. I want to do something different now; I want to pour it all into my writing; I want to do something different for work while I build this writing career that feels like a dream.
It’s hard to know what’s best — the smart thing or the fuck it who cares it’s what I want to do no matter what thing.
It’s days like this when my belief that the universe has my back, and that the reality that I dream of already exists, feels foggier. It’s hard not to get discouraged on days like this. To just feel overwhelmed, not know where to start, and despair of ever getting anywhere from not starting anything.
But then I think of what I might have done if I’d just plodded along doing something every day for the last ten years up to now, and it makes me feel better about just plodding along now, doing what I know feels right, every day, even if it feels like nothing.
I really wanted to participate in CampNaNoWriMo this April. Mostly on principle, since the last few rounds of NaNos I have whiffed it, and I miss the camaraderie and spirit of it, and the writing habit. Above all, I’ve been missing the writing habit.
I didn’t have a project yet, really, although over the first couple of months of 2019 I’ve been working on an outline for my vampire novel. An outline I was really liking, too. I felt like I was finally solving some plot points that had always bothered me, figuring out some character motivations. And even though, three days before Camp NaNo started, I decided to scrap most of that outline and start the novel in a completely different way that had come to me in a sudden flash of inspiration, the point is that I started, and I was excited about it.
But I decided right from the get go, as I was filling out my Camp profile and project, that I was going to use the flexibility of the Camp NaNo session to set a goal that was ridiculously small. One that didn’t’ even feel worth it, it was so small.
My goal for April Camp NaNo 2019 is 500 words per day. Or, 15,000 words in total.
That feels so small, dude.
As someone who is a perpetual A-student and teacher’s pet, it goes against my nature to not set a goal at “perfection”. NaNo is technically 50,000 words, therefore even though it’s Camp and you can set whatever goal you want I should be aiming for 50K because that’s the “right” way to do it.
Nevermind the fact that I have a full and busy life and writing 1,667 words per day is fucking hard around everything else that wants a piece of my time. I’m the perfect student and I’ll just have to find a way to hit the perfect goal. I’m sure I can get up two hours early every day without fail to accomplish ALL THE THINGS.
Dude. When will I learn that life doesn’t work that way?
Well, I’m trying to learn it now. Because I’m trying a new tactic — setting a goal that feels stupidly small, one that feels ridiculously easy to accomplish, too easy, pointless. So that when my life happens and my energy flags and chores crop up uninvited, I have the space to still hit that ridiculously small goal and get that hit of pride that hey, I did the thing I said I would do. I’m annoyed and stressed out over other annoying bullshit in my life today, but hey, I hit my writing goal. GO ME!
My favorite part of camp, obvs.
And that little hit of confidence will keep me going day after day. And it’s that consistency that will make things happen, not dreaming of big giant goals that you can’t hit and that drag you down with discouragement and depression.
Currently Reading: King’s Dragon by Kate Elliott; The Upside of Your Darkside by Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener
Currently Watching: Season 7 of Star Trek Voyager; Forensic Files; The Gil Mayo Mysteries
Currently Writing: unnamed vampire novel, first draft
One of the biggest problems I’ve had with my WIP since the beginning was not liking my Female Main Character (FMC) very much.
I LOVE my Male Main Character (MMC), he’s a deviant and a sarcastic ass and I love him. I love my FMC in theory, but as soon as I start to set her down on the page, the story I’ve set for her turns her into a sort of weak-willed, stereotypical two-dimensional female character who has things happen to her and around her and is the plot point for the hero’s character arc, and I hate that. But, I do still want the story to revolve around her time as a captive of the main baddie, so, how to make this work?
I think it was while I was driving yesterday that it came to me — what would make her more interesting?
Funny how massive lightning strikes of like, basic common sense, come to us out of nowhere and seem so deep and profound. 😉
What I crave in my female characters, what I love about the ones I love, is their strength and their agency over their own stories regardless of whether they’re queens or slaves. And what I hated in my FMC was that she didn’t have any. She was sassy and snarky to match my MMC, but she had no agency. She was making no decisions about her own story. She was being told what to do and having the story happen around her and not because of her.
The flash of inspiration in the car showed me how to fix that. Up to now, she has been the human consort of our MMC vampire. She’s a hedonistic party girl, just like him, and she also functions as the lure for the humans the vampire feeds on every night. She does this willingly. But at the end of the day she’s also just a kept pet, a mistress in a gilded cage who in many ways lives at his mercy. And I wanted her to have more strength.
How to make her more interesting? What if, instead of just being a party girl who gets other women to party with her, she was overtly a madame. A freelance sexual coordinator. It would be quite a change from what she had been, but also totally in line with her character all along. It gives her agency over what she’s doing and more power to make choices over her own story.
In theory I liked the idea of her living as his kept mistress but in practice I realized it was making her a weak character, at least under my pen, and I think exploring this new idea will help me flesh her out into the character I want and need her to be.
questions
What are your favorite things about female characters in stories you’ve read? What are things that you hate? Does your character have any of the traits you can’t stand? If so, how can you shake things up?
My name is Kate, Katie to my friends, and I’m a writer. I write fantasy, made-up history, and smut, for the most part. I’m a glutton for the BBC and desserts and prone to spontaneous fits of geekery.
This is where I talk about my writing life; my own personal adventure, my epic quest to make a magically successful career out of the words I write and the stories that live in my head.
I’ve committed myself to myself, finally. Ever since I was a little girl, writing stories was all I really wanted to do. But, as happens, I let fears dressed as “being realistic” stop me from pursuing this dream for far too long. So here I am, telling that little girl that the dream IS worthy of pursuit, and that there is magic at her fingertips if she would only close her eyes and breathe.
If you’re a writer too, welcome. If you’re a reader, an adventure lover, a seeker of truth and beauty, come and raise a cup. I don’t have all the answers, I’m an apprentice here just beginning my journey to the top of the mountain. But we can learn together, laugh over mistakes (hopefully), and embrace the process.
The writing life is more like an epic quest than any other profession I can think of and I’m ready to dive in, my bag of needments in hand.
To all of you along your own adventures, happy writing!
ScarletQuill 