This Is The Life

Someone has recently given me the plague, so I've been sneezing and coughing a lot the past few days as well as obsessively downing fruit juices (typically the orange type). I firmly believe that enough orange juice and excercise will rid me of this disease.

Being sick has fortunately not kept me from doing the things I'm beginning to love about college; eating (it's Fat Kid Friday!), sleeping, and playing call of duty (oh, and homework...yeah). For anyone who isn't aware, no I am not a teenage boy. No matter how teenage boyish those three activities sound I am, in fact, a female young adult (teenager sounds so... teenage).

We've discovered Call of Duty (well, Annie has discovered Call of Duty. The boys own it, I've played it before, and now Annie is addicted) and it's fantastic. It's even better since I'm pretty good at it. At least, I can destroy Annie and I stand a fighting chance against some of the guys. Boys are just better at video games, though. It's in their genes. They're alowed to beat me.

Oh, and I've been writing a lot lately. (Yeah, Lauren, that's the point of the blog.)

It really is awesome, though. I've been doing great getting at least 1,000 words in a day (It was more yesterday, I wrote while I sat in the laundry room of my dorm trying to get my clothes clean). The plot is progressing well, though I have a few concerns, and I'm really excited for where it's going.

I just can't forget about those concerns....

When in the world of being a writer, there are a lot of big road block problems that can really destroy your passion (or what I like to call, my "writing groove"). Right now, I'm in my writing groove, but I tend to fall out of it easily. Especially when I see one of those road blocks looming.

A big one is just losing time to write. Right now, I have plenty of free time to write. I can easily pound out 1,000 words, and almost as easily can manage to write 1,000 words of my novel in a good amount of time. But when I get busy, I have to shove writing aside for more important things (like studying and homework and call of duty). When I shove writing aside one day, it's easier to shove aside the next day, and the day after that, and so on and so forth. Then, weeks have passed and I haven't opened up microsoft word or even thought about my story. And thus, writers apathy has set in. I feel like this is something that happens to all writers, and I haven't figured out a better cure than forcing yourself down to write a bit every day until you work back into your groove and break the apathy.

The next biggest is when my inner editor likes to bang against the side of her cage and raise hell. Whenever this happens, I know I'm less than pleased with something I've recently written (usually I know right after I write it, but I can push it away for a while before the inner editor catches wind of it). The urge to edit is so terrible, but I know if I go back to edit I'm not making further progress in the story and it hurts me in the long run. I'm very much a revisionist. I live in that zone of rewriting and editing. But when I do that, I get stuck there. I can't move forward. Which is why I try not to edit the story until it's done (exceptions made for major plot changes that result in major cuttage of words).

My inner editor decided to bang against her cage yesterday.

I've been writing a lot, and making progess as I've said. Unfortunately, I started to think about how some of the chapters ought to be better tied together, and there's a lot of dead prose where not much goes on that should be cut. None of this is plot changing, or anything out of the revisionary-ordinary. I'm trying to placate the inner editor with cookies and promises of free reign once the draft is done, but I think she knows it will be a while before that happens.

Oh well. I'll just have to power through this. Usually when I get past the point where she starts being obnoxious, she forgets about it.

Yes, I have several imaginary entities running around in my head.

No, that is not a problem.

I need to go find me some caffine and get to writing.

-Lauren-