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Copyright 2009-2010 by
Mary Brotherton
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Inside my Brain


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Sunday, December 02, 2007

I don't know why I surprise myself, but I do. I know I am capable of even greater things, but I seem to be only learning to recognize my own potential as a writer. I'm also learning that other writers actually look up to me and claim that I motivate and inspire them - that's downright awesome.

On November 1st, 2007, I took my laptop to work and on my lunch hour I sat down without a clue as to what I was going to write. I'd tried outlining a story plot in my mind during most of October and I came up with a few ideas, but when I started writing, they all went down the tube. I thought I'd created a couple of interesting characters but they went AWOL during Halloween.

So, on All Saints' Day, I started writing. By the time my sixty minutes in a quiet office had ended, I'd written about 1300 words. Not bad for a bad beginning, but I was certain the novel stunk. Still, each day, I wrote on my lunch hour and each weekend, I stayed in my office, abandoning my wifely duties, ignoring the housework, and disregarding all but the most necessary necessities of daily living. I still took my daily walks - most days. I still showered and made sure my clothes were clean, but I was not particular with how I folded or returned things to the closet. My focus was on my first novel. The first weekend, I wrote over seven thousand words, and I was ahead of the game. My goal had been to write about two thousand words a day. Some days, I barely eked out a few hundred, and other days, my word count soared beyond four thousand. By the time the month ended, I had verified 61,729 words with the NaNo staff.

Elated, I took a day off, then started editing. I was right - it stinks! I have a lot of work to do to make this a best seller and I've discovered that in my rush to write, I managed to create two completely diverse backstories for my main characters. That will never do! But I might have a good beginning on novel number two.

Fiction is fun, but it can become work at some point - if I want it to be good fiction, I do have to work at my craft.