🦢Swan Lake Ramblings🏹💗

Drafted and Forgotten: 12/22/2023

Yep, Swan Lake. That WIP I started earlier this year and didn’t take seriously at first. I am now working to complete it to say I wrote a novel once in my lifetime.

Boy, did all those articles I read do nothing to prepare me for the absolute joy and horror of writing the first draft. 11 chapters in, I’ve executed virtually zero out of a thousand things I aim to convey. The high of typing the words on the keyboard; the low of accidentally rereading your brain barf and finding a million and one plot holes. The bursts you get after imagining what its polished version would look like. The slumps where you can’t get more than 300 words on the page in one sitting—it’s different when you actually experience it.

In short, the journey’s been wild, you guys.

I’ve wanted to share glimpses of the bumpy ride for a while, but they didn’t come out enough for the regular length of a blog post each, and I didn’t think you’d like reading two sentences passed up as a post.

But I delivered! I scrounged up a few to reach a reasonable length, so I hope you enjoy it.

rambling #1

The frustration of knowing who your characters are to the T and dying to show your audience how lovable or horrible they are when you’re not yet at the scene where there’s the reader’s determining that “Oh, yeah, I definitely like/hate him/her” hits hard.

update

I created a NaNo account to track my progress and force myself to reach deadlines to form some semblance of achievement. The most recent deadline I’ve been working on is hitting the 30K mark by December 31, which was a foolish decision. It’s the Christmas season, and I can’t—cannot—lose my streak. I have relatives from abroad coming over, impromptu trips, school deadlines, and what was I thinking?!

But it wasn’t too terrible an idea because yesterday I came home at 11PM after going to a theme park where I realized my athleticism needs a lot of work (but I’ll deal with that later; right now, I need to shut myself in a room and just write—) and attending a family dinner get-together. I was dead tired but slogged away for 20 minutes and got 321 words onto the page, so yay. That’s 321 words closer to The End. *fist punches air weakly*

NaNo Stats as of December 24 (in the website’s words)

• “total words: 13948/30000”
• “8 days in a row”
• “The early bird gets the worm! You write the most between 11:00AM and 12:00PM!”
• “You’ve written mostly at home!”
• “On average, you write 181 words per day!”
• “At this rate, you’ll be done on March 23, 2024!” (Ouch.)
• “Your average writing speed is 10 words per minute!”
• “Nice! Looks like you felt pretty good working on this goal!”

The NaNo site has got to be perky and overuse its exclamation points while it reminds me of how much the opposite of on-time I am with my novel, huh? Isn’t that fun?

My profile: https://nanowrimo.org/participants/brebs

rambling #2

I don’t recall when I realized Swan Lake would essentially be a romance fantasy story if I played my cards right, but I did some time ago. I was this close to abandoning it. 🤏 A tiny pinch. But I pep-talked myself out of it and discovered my aversion to romance was a front. Those romance novels I’ve been reading did something, after all.

Oh, but writing a romance is a whole different story. I don’t know how I feel about that.

confession

Fantasy is tiring to write. Thank goodness I’m only learning the ropes because I’ll turn over in my grave before releasing this less than a decade after I finish the draft and improve myself as a writer. And the improvement must make you guys gasp and wonder if it’s even me.

I’m serious. I think.

It’s imperfect. So much so that I hardly even glance at the words as I type them because I have to get it over with while I’m still in the fEeLz.

rambling #3

Writing is messy. I once woke up believing I’d finished writing a chapter, only to discover I did . . . but in my head.

Internal pain. Suffering. Tears I shed in my imagination.

RIP to that chapter because I’m avoiding getting it done at all possible costs for no justifiable reason.

rambling #4

I’m bound to that streak. It’s Duolingo all over again. (Plot twist! After I lost my 52-day streak, he captured me, and I’ve been writing from his basement ever since. I can hear his flippers waddling in threat above me. SOS!)

rambling #5

The pain of knowing those who meet your children, or, er, I mean, characters, might not love them as much as you do is unbearable. 🤧 I’ve nursed these people into being, you heartless creatures. What more dost thou require?!

rambling #6

Looking back at previous chapters, I noticed that my writing style changed. (That’s looking back, but not reading through it since my ego has endured enough already. Thank you very much.)

The (tedious? lengthy?) journey to finalize this reads like a fictitious documentation of my growth as a writer, which makes it painful to even skim through, but nevertheless. I remember updating my Docs right after getting discouraged from a ballet class and working on it cheered me right up.

Maybe even if I don’t finish this by my set time, I’ll leave with something I worked hard on—finished or unfinished, polished or unpolished.

But I’ve come too far to even try giving up. And I have an issue with giving up, so in your face, procrastination!

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Thank you for reading!

And after that venting, this is still pretty short. Man, I should write down my weird ramblings when they come.

Let me know if I should do a part two with those and some others coz your friendly blogger here has much work to do this ho-ho-holiday season. 😛

PS I’ve been out of practice, and you’ve probably noticed. Oopsie. Sorry if this flowed more chunkily than my other posts. I’m working to release better and more consistent content, so don’t you worry, my fine fellows.

PPS It’s giving Tumblr, not gonna lie.