Reboot time.

I’m having a hard time writing and for once, I have no excuses.

It’s not that I can’t. I can. I’ve written 7 pages now of my new story. But I can’t get into it. The characters aren’t talking to me much. The world isn’t that alive. And nothing is coming out quite right.

Now, that could be because the last novel I wrote, I had been tossing around the idea for over a year before I started writing. This time, not so much. And maybe it’s because I feel rather blah myself. But whatever it is, creating this world is a lot harder.

Also, the internet is distracting me really badly. I start to write a little bit, and then, “I should go check facebook.” or “I  wonder if Alyssa is on” or “I should check blog stats” All this is stupid because I have less than fiftey friends on facebook, and since it’s summer, it’s pretty inactive, Alyssa’s only on for a little bit this past week, and with an average views of less than twenty per day, I don’t even know why I try. Then, I get really distracted and I think I should go check out other sites which I told myself I wouldn’t visit, or try to find games to play or videos to watch. It’s one huge mess.

I really probably should try some kind of motivation but I don’t even know what kind of motivation I would want. Allowing myself to spend money isn’t going to help because I don’t have enough money to spend (not when I spent a hundred dollars on text books last week.) and I don’t know what I’d buy. I’m usually not someone who wants to spend money.

I wish I could make this world real to me. I really want to draw but I’ve drawn at least one picture already and nothing came to me.

Worse, I also want to write a short story. A really good short story. I’m counting on there being another writing contest this year and I want to enter it. I now have two ideas. One is a mermaid story and the other is what happens if we kill English. Random, I know, but I don’t know if I can pull off the 5 pages I must.

Nor do I have the motivation to write these either. *sigh*

So I guess it’s time to just plow thorugh it. I’m hoping by the end that I’ll love the story and the characters. I can’t waste the time if I don’t like it, but I like the concept and i’ve tended to fall in love with almost all the characters I’ve written about.

I just wish the world was more real.

Frustrations found on yahoo answers.

I made the mistake of getting on yahoo answers to ask a question about research. Yahoo answers sucks me in, especially since I found the writing section and that I’ve been answering questions from that.

And here’s something interesting that I found there. A lot of people, and I mean a lot, posted parts of their story or something asking people to critique it. I don’t. The little bit I skim makes me think that it isn’t worth my time sifting through the mostly bad stuff to find the good points, and then I’m just going to hurt the person when I say, “This is wrong and this is bad and this you should question.”  But I find it very interesting that people actually do this.

Another thing commonly found on there is something along the lines of, “Help me with refining a plot/naming a character/naming a book/anything remotely related to rewriting.” I’d like to just get on there and smack them and say, “Dude, it’s your book. Write your own book already!” I mean, if you can’t figure out how to get a person to the ball, then either a) you don’t have a writer’s talent for plots (A writer can get anything to happen if they think long enough. Notice that last phrase. YOu have to think about it.) or b) they shouldn’t be at the ball. (Characters tell you much information that one should listen to.)

And really, do these people really think that I can help them title their book/story? Three sentences are not enough to know what the story is about, general themes, or anything. Let’s see:

An ace pilot, determined to throw off his unsavory background, tries to win the most challenging race of the galaxy.

If I were to tell you that sentence of my summary from Shad, you wouldn’t touch anything upon his discovery of himself, his realization that winning wasn’t his dream, or anything else like that. You’d go something with the race when, in reality, the race is a minor part.

It just makes me wonder sometimes how many people out there so strongly desire to be writers that they’ll try anything to do it. It’s like that book, something like, no plot, no problem, how to get you writing anyway. You need a plot to have a book.

I know. This is just one giant rant. And yes, finding people to help you in your writing path I think would be helpful. I’ve gone for so long without someone that I don’t know how to do it now. But I wish i still had someone to bounce off ideas and such. However, I don’t think that yahoo answers is the place for that kind of association.

On a side note:

SummEry vs. SummAry. Summery modifies summer, as in, the December weather was quite summery at 70º. Summary is just a brief statement about something, for example, my sentence about Shad was a summary of the book.

don’t you hate this?

I don’t know why, but I didn’t have a good day for some reason. Which is strange, because my Saturdays are usually good. But basically I’ve been frustrated all day.

So, to calm down, I decided I’ll write a little bit before bed. That usually helps. It takes me a minute or so to figure out the title of my most recent work, but once I do, I pull it up and go to scroll up a bit to remember where I left off at.

Only to find out that the stupid computer ate the whole thing!

I had this really awesome, dangerous, horrid scene that actually came out halfway decent for a first draft. I even posted a video here about intubation after writing that, because I figured the guy would need to be intubated.

But it’s just gone. My computer has no record of this modification. I thought I saved it. I’m usually good about saving things. But apparently I either didn’t this time or appleworks didn’t figure out it was saved.

See, my biggest problem is that the computer doesn’t even think it was modified at all. It wasn’t like I realized I started something and thought it was corrupted. It’s not like I didn’t press the save button when I was done. It is more like it never existed.

So now I’m even more frustrated because I can’t do anything. I have to rewrite the whole scene, and study for two tests, and go to bed. I think I should go to bed actually.

(Although, this story is going to be hard as it is. I’ve been tossing around this story since December. So I have a challenging story to write and now I have to rewrite a scene, which I hate doing. *giant sigh*)

I have a feeling I’m going to be sharing some tips about rewriting scenes later this week. (OH, and this does not replace the question of the week if you were wondering. This is a spontaneous post to let me rant. Question of the week will be here on Sunday as normal.)