Indecision,Getting Started and Stereotypes

Well, its been a while.

It’s been a busy month, especially with going to Uni. Freshers has been amazing, but now I’m back on the job and I have a new plan. Mind you, don’t I always? I mean, this is only my 3rd post, and in each one I’ve had a different plan. Ah well, I’ll find one to stick with eventually I hope…

Nevertheless, the new plan. As sitting down and attempting to throw down words in bulk off the top of my head, or attempting to plan thoroughly each chapter before I actually get down to writing both don’t seem to work for me, I plan on taking a far, far more leisurely pace to my writing, especially with my Uni workload too. While browsing aimlessly through several authors websites, I came across this :http://www.brentweeks.com/extras/writing-advice/. Curious I started to have a look, and about an hour later I finished, determined to get it done. Seriously, if you’re interested in writing, fantasy or not, take a look the advice in there is great. One thing that caught my attention was the idea of starting off writing 250 words, each day without fail (Well, not necessarily that strict). It seemed to me to be a really easily way to manage  my writing, as it keeps some progress, no matter how slow. I’m hardly in a rush. So with the intention of beginning this routine, I began to write and after 4 1/2 hours I reached my target. Oh dear…  Maybe a tad slow.

I’ll admit. Starting this ‘Novel’ off is horrendous. I feel as if despite having a prologue before my first chapter, my first chapter is going to be how people judge my book, and I don’t know why. Maybe its because the protagonist will be introduced there. Who knows? Nevertheless, I’m quite happy with my first 250 words, setting the scene has never been one of my strong points, unless I ramble. Then it just gets plain dull. I’ll admit, I’m worried about introducing the different factions and characters throughout the book, but especially in the beginning. Really it’s unintentionally meeting every stereotype under the sun that worries me.

I hate stereotypes. I really do. But I don’t mean it like hating things that meet stereotypes. It’s the entire idea of stereotypes that I hate. So what if Dwarves are short, mine alot and live in mountains? And that’s just one among an ocean of many. But several times, I have seen fantasy works especially slagged off for being unoriginal, due to using several stereotypes. I mean, many stereotypes are very good ideas, several of which I intend to use myself. Nevertheless, I am trying to steer away from too many stereotypes in my writing, to keep my work in the eyes of others, ‘original’.

I’ve decided to keep a word count again at the bottom of the post, just to show how much I’ve written. And wow. Half an hour, and this post is nearly twice as long as what it took me four and a half hours to write. Logic.

Word count: 252