Motivation is one thing; Actually doing it another.

I was hoping, over my break, to finish and do a computer edit of my most recent story. However… that did not happen. Why? Because everything else continued to distract me.

Take me writing this post. I got on the computer, check my stats, checked facebook, checked my school e-mail, got on to write this post and discovered a new theme. Checked out the new theme. Then got around to writing a post. Earlier today I modified a comic strip because it made so much sense with my modification.

I have found some really great things today and I like what I have found. However, finding cool things don’t result in me actually doing what I need to do, that is, editing my story.

So what am I to do? I actually found the answer in one of the wonderful little links I found this week. Turn off the internet.

What I did was I turned off my computer’s airport actually, so it thought I had no internet. That kept me from quickly switching from my word processor to facebook to check the updates or other various things.  Ideally, it should be written in a place that doesn’t have internet, so you can’t even be tempted to change the internet back on. (I actually did that. Everything went well, until I needed to check a fact and I turned back on the internet. Not a good thing.)

Unfortunately, with this new knowledge I have not had the chance to edit anything today. Maybe later.

Victory is mine!

So I’m writing my current story, “To be Held,” finally! It’s been two to three weeks since I’ve been able to write, so I’m rather happy.

That being said, I posted last week about how complicated it is when your characters have secrets and you don’t want everything spilled at the same time That is why this story is so difficult for me actually, because it is a strongly secret and suspicion based story. But… well I did something and I think it worked out.

What I did was I wrote out all of my characters’ secrets, whose secret it was, and why it was important to the story. Then, with all the secrets written in front of me, I ordered the secrets based off of how I wanted they to be revealed.  With that, I could easily look at my newly-created cheat sheet and figure out what the next scene had to be about.

So, scene one I needed to create enough tension that would cause Carmen (the main character) to become suspicious of Edmond. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t want to give anything away. What’s even better is that I think I did it. Edmond gives her enough hints that he knows more than he’s saying.

Then, today, I surprised myself by being able to write scene two. This one had some surprises for myself, mostly that all of my characters wanted to talk at the exact instant and tell all of their secrets. And… I let them actually. Which I know, in a story based on suspicion and distrust, it doesn’t make sense, but it did actually. And I didn’t reveal everything. Just… most everything.

So I am very satisfied with myself to be quite honest. I’ve written ten pages in the past two days and I like how it is coming out thus far. However, I listened to the song it was based on today again and I discovered it is very loosely based on the song. Oh well. I still like the story a lot. (Have I ever written a summery? I’m not sure. I’ll have to check.)

Oh, and about editing Shad, I honestly don’t know what to do exactly. I have one more chapter to read through however, and then I’m done with that, but about writing a synopsis… that is just totally overwhelming. I’ll see. Next week I’ll (hopefully) get off.

hiding the whole picture

Writers have one of the most challenging jobs. Why? Because we see the whole picture and we have to keep parts of the picture hidden until we want the reader to know.

Case in point: I’m working on my new story today. (To be Held.) In this story, we have four doctors trapped in a bunker while they are being attacked. One of the doctors are unconscious for most of it, which brings it down to three. From that, I need every single one of these people thinking that the other one is to blame for this attack.

This is really easy. I know who is in the wrong, who knew about the attack, and who knows nothing. The problem is that the reader doesn’t know. The reader doesn’t know what has been going on, each of the person’s history, or why each one would distrust the other one.

Which means that I, as the writer, need to demonstrate this distrust in such a believable fashion, all the while setting it up so when the reader discovers the truth, they can look back and say that they should have seen in coming.

So tell me again why I like writing when it is this complicated?

It’s actually because it is this complicated that I like writing. And it’s when I get the breakthroughs, like one of them has a gun in his/her possession, and why one of them might distrust this rather nice doctor, that I write for.

So now, back to building up the suspicion.

risky writing

My new story’s working title is “To be Held,” just so you know.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about the story.

The main character’s name is Carmen. Carmen is doing research in basically how they can use fetal cells to either cure or heal diseases and other things.  Early on in the story, she tells her mom that she is pregnant.

All I know for sure is that she is pregnant because they were having a New Year’s party, they got drunk, and this guy that is an utter flirt convinced her.  So, for the first time in my writing career, I am writing something that I completely and totally disagree with happening. (Basically, she shouldn’t have slept with him.)

I find this kinda strange because I’m basing this story off of a Christian song that I couldn’t figure out and, in all honesty, premarital sex is rather looked down upon in Christian churches. (Toss in wine and you have serious problems.)

The other problem is I almost feel guilty for doing this. Yes, I know it happens. I know quite a few people have had children before they were married.  But the fact that I’m writing just doesn’t seem right. It’s like I’m looking into it too deeply.

Now, maybe that is because I don’t know the story yet. And although this pregnancy, I think, is needed, I don’t know how much it is going to play a role into the story. For all I know, it won’t be much. (It’ll be some though, just based on how it ends.) But I don’t know if I’m going to be doing much of this any time soon again. I just have too high morals.

(And yet I’m thinking that Miles needs to have a little more happen to him than a talking to. Wonderful. :P)

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.)

emergency situations in writing

Being in nursing school, I find myself taking on  different types of scenarios as I learn. Most recently, I decided to write an emergency medical situations. No, I do not think of myself as qualified to do anything in that situations, but I am slowly gaining a clue of, if not what is going on, then how to find out what is going on. ONce you know how to find out what to do, well, then, you’re half way to writing it.

In my current story, I put four doctors in a room together and let them panic about everything. However, in order for something to work out with the story, I needed one of them unconscious. The only way to get one of them unconscious was an accident which involved that emergency situation.

Through research, logical deduction and TV, I figured out rather quickly that breathing is a very important function and one that doctors try to attend to almost immediate.

So when my patient is having problems breathing, along with everything else, chances are they might have to intubate him.

Because of that, I found this awesome little video about the procedure. Now, it probably isn’t the best description to help describe what the doctor is doing, but I think it does well enough to give me a clue that I don’t just write a sentence. “She intubated him.” (Lame!)  Video is in the link. You need quicktime however if you don’t have it.