Time is something you can never get back...

I’ve been “trying” to write a novel for over nine months now (technically many years longer than that, but I really started working towards my goal in Jan). For months I wished I’d get laid off from my job (or win the lottery, though I knew that option was much less likely) so I could stay home and write every day, but still afford to pay my bills. At the end of July, I finally got my wish! My job let me go, but I can pay still pay my rent (thanks NYS unemployment).  Although rent is about all I can afford to pay right now, but that's another post...

Now you’d think the first thing I’d do after being laid off would be to start writing, right? Right. Except, no, wrong. Considering the company I worked for let me go on the Friday before my planned trip to FL for the RWA 2010 conference (nice place, right? Let’s let her go right before her vacation so she can worry the whole time about being broke when she gets back home!!!!), I figured I’d wait until I returned from my vacation (slash learning experience heh).

But then I decided to join the WWBC. For those who’ve read my previous entries, you know what I’m talking about. For those who haven’t, I’ll just say that it’s sort of like a critique group, except one person is in charge. Anyway, my intention for writing this post is not to talk bad about anyone, or to say “that sh*t sucked.” So I won’t trash talk it. But basically, it was a waste of my entire month of August, and most of my September.

Our first assignment was character profiles. I had to come up with an antagonist and write a background for him/her. I decided my antag was going to be my protag’s mother. I wrote up a profile. I sent it out. I was told that she didn’t make a good antag and I should come up with another. Hmmmm, I thought this was MY story here?... So I made a new one, an evil alien guy. Except, well, he wasn’t evil enough apparently. I revised him three times before I was told “ya know, he’s an okay antagonist, but how ‘bout you go back and work on the mother again.”

Hmmmmm.

I rewrite the mother’s profile a few more times. In the meantime I also wrote my protagonist profile, and my world-building profile (since most of the story is going to be occurring on an alien planet). Both of those I also rewrote three or four times (and each of these profiles is 9-10 pages btw). Not to mention I'm still working on making the alien guy more evil. By now, I am getting tired of this.

If I had simply filled out a character questionnaire (or something along those lines that you can find all over the internet), I would’ve finished my characters in a week or maybe less. But because between each of my profile rewrites I had to wait around for my next batch of “critiques” so I could rewrite my characters with everyone else’s opinions in mind, I ended up spending nearly 2 months just on my characters. No plotting, no scenes, no nothing else. Just three freaking characters (I hadn’t even gotten to the heroine’s love interest yet!!!) and a planet that was still a bit too similar to Earth.

Last night I decided to break free. I am no longer doing WWBC. I’m not waiting around for other people to tell me if my writing is good or not. ‘Cuz I know it is. You learn by doing, not by waiting. And if my writing isn’t “publishable” yet, I’d rather at least have written something than to say “well I’m waiting for the go-ahead from my crit partners.” Like I said earlier, it’s MY book. My story. No one else’s. If it sucks a-s-s, it’s mine. And if it gets published and people actually enjoy it, it’s - guess whose? - mine!

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some writing to do. I’ve got almost two lost months to make up for!  ;-)