On the Writing Front

At a little less than two weeks with my blog and this is only my fourth post, oy! My mom who started a blog after me has a much more interesting and updated blog.  Even if I've been unsuccessful with keeping my blog going, I have been successful with writing.  I've been writing daily, averaging a little over 1000 words a day.  It's not much, so I'm working on getting that word count up.

I've been trying to read as many blog posts, articles and other advice for writing as possible.  Trying to soak all that in while writing my first novel has been a bit of a headache at times.  I need to stop taking all the advice so seriously.  They're good ideas and jumping off points, but trying to make a huge list of do's and don'ts will only make me confused.  So, instead of pressuring myself to follow any advice I've ever seen, I'm trying to be more relaxed and go with the flow.  It's hard, but I'm trying.

I usually sit down around the same time each night to write - 10:30 PM.  That's a little late for most people, but I've always been a night owl and I seem to have the most energy at night.  I don't know why, I just do.  I try to go over what I wrote the day before just to check for mistakes, and the overall flow of everything before I settle down to write new material.

I have found that I NEED an outline to write.  My first outline was over fifteen pages in Word.  I started writing my first draft off of it, but then came up with a great deal more ideas to add in, so I went back to the drawing board, or keyboard, and redid my outline.  It's much longer, I haven't checked the exact page count.  For the second go around with my outline I used Scrivener.  I saw a lot of writers raving about Scrivener and thought I would give it a try.  It is extremely useful so far.  Especially since I need everything organized and need to be able to shift scenes and ideas around in order to have any chance at not becoming too overwhelmed and ultimately confusing myself.  I did my second outline and then started my first draft off of the outline through the program.  Seriously, check it out.

And with that, I will conclude this post.  Hoping to maybe get some writing in early tonight.  Early as in 8:30 PM, ha!