I Don't Know What I'm Doing...

And this year it’s not going to be Oz related! It’s called “Where You Tend A Rose,” and it’s inspired by Beauty and the Beast. Here’s my synopsis and a quick doodle of my MCs:

Alexis Evans agrees to take her father's place as a prisoner after he plucks a flower from a magical garden owned by Fate herself. Now she must endure the remainder of her life tending the Garden with its protector: a strange, reclusive creature named Dimitri, who likes the current situation even less than she does. As they try to live together at least somewhat peacefully, a new danger emerges that threatens the Garden's existence. Can they successfully protect it? Or will they be their own undoing?

After thinking about it for a little while, I realized that I really wanted to continue with last year's novel. It's the one thing my mind kept coming back to. The biggest problem I was having with that choice was the fact that I didn't know if there was quite enough of the story left for the full 50k. My original thought was to do some short stories in the same world if I didn't have enough. That is still my back-up plan, but I have another idea.

I know that I need to fix up what I have written. Some things have changed because of decisions I made in the later story, there are some parts that I think just need to be rewritten, and some pieces I think I need to add or subtract. So I'm thinking of stating from the beginning and rewriting the entire thing, using the old partial draft as a guideline. I'm going to have to go through it all before I write anyway, and I'll want to fix any problems I run into, so why not?

Anything that is kept the same or nearly the same wouldn't be counted towards my word count. Just anything that has been thoroughly rewritten and edited or is completely new.

I have four separate ideas to work on for Nano, and I should choose one soon so I can start planning, because I know from experience that I need to plan at least some of it and get the basic plot. But I have no idea which one I should choose.

Should I continue last years novel that needs very little pre-planning? Should I write the prequel to that novel that will need a lot of planning? Should I choose one of the other, unrelated stories that need a whole heck of a lot of work to be done, but will give me a break from the other world?

I make videos that often have a fair amount of text in them and she has told me recently just to stick with not using a comma in front of "and" and the like.

I've been a little stuck at a point in something I'm writing, so I posted a small blurb about my problem on my facebook, and asked for ideas and opinions on the subject, as sometimes the ideas of other people can help me get back into "story mode" and help me figure out the problem on my own. One person (one of my uncles) just told me to relax and the ideas will eventually come to me. Which is pretty sound advice, but I kinda wanted to see the opinion of others, because I know it helps me out sometimes. Another friend of mine sent me a private message with a couple of paragraphs of ideas. Really good ideas that wouldn't quite work, but good ideas that got me thinking nonetheless. I started typing out a response about how I liked the ideas and that they helped me come up with a few of my own, typing a bit of what I had originally been thinking and what some of the new ideas that her thoughts had helped me come up with. After I was finished and sent it, checked out what I had written. I found that I had just spent an hour and a half writing a 3 page long reply that solved most of my problem...

Okay, I just going to rant a little here, just to get things off of my chest.

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Right now I'm taking an online branding/design course that my boss signed up for to help design her site and that she insisted that I take. I am really regretting agreeing to it. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm confused and annoyed. This isn't anything I've had ANY training in or am interested in, whatsoever. I barely understand what she wants, I barely understand the class, I can't seem to merge the two, and I can't find a way to describe what I'm trying to do or the message that I'm trying to get across.

I don't get why I agreed to this. I am not a web designer and I am not a graphic designer. So i have no clue what the fudge I'm doing in this class. It's giving me a royal headache. It's not my company, and it's not really my job, either. I'm horrible at explaining things or getting things across to people. If I want to try explaining something to someone, I'd rather talk directly to them, (ironic, considering I'm more of an introvert and don't like talking to people I don't know). I just don't get business things, or speaker things, or any of it really. I just don't understand them; I'm not the person you should be asking to do so much of this. I don't understand branding, I don't understand design, I just don't understand any of the ideas or concepts; it's not me.

I wouldn't mind so much if I was simply being asked for my input, or even if we were all working on it together more than we are. But mostly just me? I don't think I can do it.

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