Being up and awake early is always the way I like to start my day when I want to get writing done.  I like the silence and stillness of the morning before the chaos and rushing of the afternoon hits.

This morning as I got my breakfast ready, I thought about what I wanted to spend my time with this morning, and decided almost immediately that I wanted to spend the day making corrections / edits to an Eternal Promises chapter, and then move forward and work on completing the new chapter for it as well.  I’ve been spending a lot of time with Touch of Destiny these past few weeks, tweaking things that I’ve previously written, and moving forward with adding new chapters / scenes.  I’ve been feeling really good about it, and I’ve been able to slowly make it feel like it has a voice of its own rather then a monotone telling of events.  This is excitement.

As excited as I am by ToD, I’m still deeply in love with EP.  I’ve spent so much time and energy on it, and I refuse to let it go.  I always come back to it, and one day I’m going to finish it completely and when that time comes, I’m going to be happy with it.

I’ve been working on some major overhauls of the previous chapters.  They are so old, and when they were written originally I was more in a rush to get them down on paper then to actually stop and look at them objectively to see if they could be better.  I also didn’t know then what I know now, and even things like the grammar and the word choices make me cringe.  Its a long arduous project to get this story up to snuff, but its so worth it.  I feel like I’m fixing something magical every time I get a chance to step back look at the improvements.

The newer chapters for the EP are getting difficult for me because I’m nearing the point where I need to make a decision about the ending.  There are a few directions that I’ve toyed with over the years, but none of them have ever really jumped out at me as being the one and only possibility.  I suspect that I already know what is going to happen, but I’ve been writing this story for so long that maybe I’m a little sad to see it end.

I know that part of the reason why I’m having difficulty with the newer chapters is because I’m writing things I’ve never had a lot of experience with writing.  I’m always ready for a challenge, but sometimes its easier to see something done by others then to try and figure out how to do it yourself.  I’ve spent a lot of time researching and I’ve tried my hand at this one technique in the past for personal entertainment only, but I’ve never done the sorts of scenes that I’m working on now with the intention of someone else reading them.  Its intimidating to say the least.

I read an interview, or maybe it was just an article, about Stephen King last week.  In it he said something along the lines of: one of the things that writers need to do to be better at writing is to force themselves to be uncomfortable, and write about the subject matter that you know isn’t light and fluffy.  People are not perfect, and as a writer its your job to show that about your characters.  You need to make them real, and then your audience can identify with them, and bond with them.

I’m going to try and keep that in mind today as I tackle things that aren’t my strong suit as a writer.  I’m not going for a word count today, and that in itself makes the day feel different, but sometimes different is okay.