News: Nightly Update

No new chapter today, I'm afraid. The next one is crucial, though, because Grim, and thus we, get to see Wayside for the first time. When I started writing it, the city changed a little, which is cool because I did't really see it clearly until tonight. It's going to be a fun place to work in, I think.

In case I didn't mention this, I've decided, after reading On Writing, to abandon some of my preconceived plot lines, or at least shelve them for now. Something that King says in the book resonated with me, and I'd like to explore it before plowing on with structured plot devices. He writes that his favorite stories, and the first drafts he enjoys penning the most, involve organic characters who are faced with individual situations, which they resolve in some way or another, and that eventually those characters and situations lead naturally to some sort of theme -- or they don't. No big deal.

I love that because it's like the straight-ahead animation method I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, and its a method I've been using for a few chapters now -- one that has led to some lovely organic moments that I hadn't planned.

I've also taken his advice and put myself on a writing regimen -- at least 1000 words a day, which usually isn't hard. The key with doing this, so sayeth he, is that whatever your 'quota' (a word I don't think he actually uses, but there it is) shouldn't feel like a task. You should *want* to be doing this. If it's a burden, why are we writing at all?

So far, every evening that I've sat down to write Wayside instead of playing a video game (oh don't worry, I haven't stopped completely) or watching television (I watch the same 4 shows ad nauseum anyway) has been a joy. I hope I can hold the lightning in the bottle long enough to get this whole thing down.

Consequently, in case anyone cares about such things, the manuscript is over 15k words now, nearly 80 double-spaced pages in Word. Man, who'd have thought?