Status Updates From Writing the Wave: Inspired ...

I've been reading this book since 2000 or so. I don't know if I'll ever finish it. I just keep coming back to it.

I just added 6000 words in the course of 24 hours. I haven't read any more pages because the exercise on p. 120 she estimates as taking up to an hour, but obviously this book is working in some way. I have 22,000 words written, and I started last week sometime. This is exciting, and I'm starting to feel how you have to have discipline to get good at it. You have to write even when you don't feel it.

This is a lot of practice in brainstorming. I'm having some trouble tying it back to the idea I've already begun working on, and I feel like this gets me off on another tangent. I also feel tricked a little - I just got told, in a very creative way, to write an outline. It sounds like an English teacher in disguise.

I have finally gotten past where I got the first time I tried this. I haven't been reading what I wrote the first time. I have 30 pages in a document, but I probably have more like 15 pages of one particular story I've been turning over in my mind.

Fun. I love this book. I haven't yet read what I wrote the last time I tried this out, but I'm about to.

I just wrote quite a few little pieces that I like after reading chapter 4. I have no idea what to do with them still in light of the novel idea I'm toying around with...I keep waiting to figure out how to develop plot - I mostly have random snippets so far. But I really do like what this last chapter had me write.

Writing about trees. I never realized how many trees I had in my life, or how many people would have a tree in their own life.

I've got 14 pages written. I don't know where I'm going with this, but it does have some of the same exhilarating feel as surfing.

Round two of trying this book. The last time was about 10 years ago. I love the idea; I'm hoping for more discipline this time around and am writing all my responses in Google Docs so that I have no excuse to not have access to a place to keep all my stuff together. No randomly scattered journals here there and everywhere