I Can Feel Myself Getting Better...

[Chessie]

So last night while I was in the process of slaying my word count, a thought came to me: holy shit, my characters are doing something different in this scene and I didn't even have to ponder over it. And that provoked a whole new sort of...shall I say...realization that I have reached a threshold in my writing and sort of leveled up.

I've been writing from the time I was very small. My relationship with writing has been one of intense passion, intellectual stimulation, and a platform for my thoughts. Over the years I've improved at this little thing and that big thing but character motivation has always been a struggle. Yet this book I'm writing now is completely different from my other ones. Not only is it better structured but it has direction and the characters are the ones driving forth the tale.

I am trusting my intuition completely, entirely, and it's paying off. The path they're on is right. It feels solid. And then I started getting ideas for the next story in the same world with two of the current side characters and how much I want to explore a theme in their lives.

But how am I getting better? I'm not necessarily talking about prose here. I'm talking about story structure. My outline has been a blessing. Yet, I don't really need it anymore. I'm noticing myself advancing forward in chapters following my gut, letting the characters take over. They're the ones getting to those plot points, they're the ones solving their own problems and making new ones. This is a vast improvement for me, someone who used to struggle scene to scene with motivation and character goals. Now, I can't get to the new scene fast enough OR type fast enough. My husband has had to pry me away from the laptop for the past 2 days I'm so ****ing obsessed.

A whole new me. I can see it happening with the next book and the next book now that I know how to tap into my characters in this way.

So yeah, holy cow am I on fire right now with my writing. I feel myself getting better because of how I'm approaching the story with more flow, more trust. Eagerness to see it to the end. I'm stoked to see how it's all going to end although I know they stay together somehow. And maybe that's just, that I was meant to write romance from the very beginning. One of my crit partners laughed when I told him this and he said, "T, you've always been good at writing domestic life and relationships." I have found my strength as a writer and hopefully more of this will come.

Now how about the rest of you? In what areas do you feel yourself improving in your skill?

 

[skip.knox]

I think I'm getting better at editing and knowing what needs to be edited. But that's not important right now.

What's important is you are in the groove! Yay! Go! Stop reading this! (multiply image max by 10!)

 

[Caged Maiden]

YAY! I recently leveled up, too. Keep it up, girlie. You're rocking it for nano!

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I'm getting better at not reading threads here to procrastinate editing and writing!

Oh...

Damn.

Never mind.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yay! Chessie that is so exciting!

I can feel myself getting better at side character development. This is the first story I've worked on where almost all of my characters have different motives and goals and histories and personalities. It is SO CHALLENGING, but also really rewarding.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Your characters are discovering their autonomy, they're becoming self aware! It's always exciting when that happens. Your story seems to write itself. It's like you and your character are a team, writing your way through pages and pages hand in hand...until they refuse to do what you want and you have to spend many stressful hours trying to reason with and decode them...yeah, mostly the latter.

And wow, I totally know that feeling of "leveling up." Just you're writing and you think, "This is better than what I was writing before. I've reached a new level." It happens in small increments for me, not as big revelations. Last time it happened was...last week, I think, when I broke my stubborn block and started writing again. I was reading through my action-packed chase scene (and those are usually a mess for me) and realized everything was smoother than usual and I was getting the hang of a new method to make the writing move together more fluidly in an action scene while integrating the character's thoughts and everything was generally BETTER than it had been a week before. And it literally felt like reaching a new level. The thing with writing is, the levels are infinite...

I'm getting so much better at integrating the character's internal monologue into the narrative in this, mainly because I hated it at the start and I was making a real effort to get better. I'm mastering my character's sharp, abrasive, matter-of-fact voice. It's kind of exciting, really.