Challenge Accepted

Here I am, fresh New Year's Resolution in hand to FINALLY finish my book this year.

And my beloved former Creative Writing professor from BYU shares a challenge on her blog. Will we join her and write a book together this year? By that, she means she is going to post step by step what she does as she writes her next book for publication, and she invites her blog writers to keep pace with her as they write their own books.

Challenge accepted! I'm really excited. I think this could help me out. If you'd like to check out her blog, here's the post.

The first step she talks about is coming up with a concept.

For me... I've sort of been trying to write the same story since I was 12 years old. (That means I have been trying for 19 years. Holy cow!) Over time, there have been a lot of changes to the plot lines, to the characters, to the setting. But it all comes from the same basic root.

What I need to decide is... is it worth continuing? Is there really something here, a story I can share if I only put my mind to it? Or... would I have more success if I threw everything out and started over?

I think I am going to take some time tonight to read through some of my drafts I've done recently and not so recently. Do I really need to start at page 1 (I am a perfectionist and I am very prone to starting over at page 1), or do I have some salvageable material here?

On the perfectionist note... I was reading up on my inspiration author, Laini Taylor, and I found this great blog post she wrote. She is a perfectionist like me, and her writing process sounds a lot like mine! She can't write a rough first draft and then go back and fix it. She likes to go back and fix things up as she goes, and the result is a stronger first draft that is easier to revise into a second. Somehow it's really comforting to hear that's her process... I'm not crazy to write the way that I do.