JOLIE@tart

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

I've been handed this beautiful,complex, vulnerable Ivory/Wharton-esque plot set in 1910s London,Paris and the French Riviera!! I thank the Lord above for it! It's so great and I'm not even going to worry about the setting or the characters and let the chips fall where they may. I am writing smart and writing from my heart--I'm keeping what makes romance readers love reading romances, but putting my own personal touches on it to make it stand out from the crowd. I absolutely adore this plot and am head over heels into research and am steadily plotting with each new tidbit I gain. I'm putting the applications listed in Donald Maas' "Writing The Breakout Novel" to the test: making the romance genre my own instead of the other way around; giving the readers want they want even if they aren't sure of it as of yet, et al. But mainly, just make them laugh, make them cry and make them feel--and have a semblance of fun whilst writing it.

i can be. anything.
15.11.05

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

I am going to join NaNoWriMo for the first time. I am bemused over the fact that at the beginning of October, when I first heard of the "contest" I wasn't going to join because I had nothing prepared, nothing ready and able to be written, but I signed up for it anyways just because. And then I got the email for it on Oct 30th and felt a sense of mingling peace and inevitability--I am going to do this. Words have frightened and intimidated me for a while, to the point where I could not write anything worth mentioning for the past six or seven months, maybe even longer. Somewhere over the past year I lost my confidence, that bright eyed wonder of writing and it became a ball and chain, an albatross around my neck and try as I might, I couldn't make anything work.

It was jealousy I realized, not just jealousy over other people's writing, but jealousy that they had their shit together and I didn't. And the way this whole thing runs is that it's seen that being jealous of someone was an indicator of the envier's lack of (talent,drive,etc) instead of being a normal, healthy emotion that everyone feels. So I suppressed my envy or joked about it, making light of it because society has made healthy jealousy(non-insane-psycho-freak envy) an anathema to "normal" people, that there is something wrong with you if you are jealous of someone else. So I accepted my jealousy, didn't resist it and allowed it to pass through me. And scales fell from my eyes--that the writers I was jealous of didn't possess some secret formula or super powers that enabled them to write what they write, it was plain old sitting down and writing, and writing well; their ability stemmed from equal parts of gumption, knowledge and courage. Sure I still do experience twinges o envy when I become uncertain about what I've written, but I'm still alive after I feel the emotion, and it doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with me or my writing ability.

So I'm writing straight through December 1st, no editing, no internet to distract me, and probably no reading outside of research for those post-NaNoWriMo revisions. I want to sell when I'm twenty-one and my birthday is eight months away. Who knows what shall happen? But nothing shall happen if I chicken out. So pray for me, and Godspeed with your own writing!

i can be. anything.
2.11.05