worked on: “Spooky Boarding School”
I began working on this on Sunday as I watched a movie and wondered: “what if that old, haunted house were turned into a boarding school?” It hasn’t consumed my thoughts ever since, but both times that I’ve sat down to write since then, I have at least opened the document. But today, I added at least two-thirds of a page onto the existing text! It might not seem like a lot, but I actively tried to describe and convey emotions and to show instead of tell (this is a larger, more important concept than I have time to explain rn). I’m more of a playwright than a general fiction writer, so describing everything can be a little daunting for me. I never strike the perfect balance: everything is either too much or too little, so tonight I tried to find that balance.
It can be discouraging or even frustrating to do so. I often can’t think of the right word or combination of words and open another document until I can find something else. So far, this has been very helpful. It gets me out of my original mindset and keeps me working on more than one thing at a time. The more I can move away from something and revisit it, the better I will be at attacking it when I return.
I only wrote for about ten minutes for a couple of reasons: one, my dad got home from work late and I wanted to talk to him for a bit. Two, I’m feeling very tired, and while I want to push myself to write as much as I can, I don’t want to be falling asleep at my nine-to-five tomorrow. And, three, I have a headache and it’s all I can think about.
overall success: (on a scale of Loki, from Avengers to Dark World) this was a solid Dark World right now. Maybe a Ragnarok (with the first of the two bonus clips, of course). I didn’t write for very long, but I did some fairly solid work in that time.
listened to: the golf channel with my dad
munched on: exactly nine coffee flavored peanut M&M’s
PS: if you want a post on showing vs. telling, please let me know! It was simultaneously frustrated and helped me and I would love to explain it further of y’all want