At the Bottom

Everyone has to start somewhere. Your first step onto the mountain doesn't bring you directly to the top. The first word of a novel doesn't bring you straight to the end. Most people don't think about the process of climbing the mountain when they hear someone's finally made it to the top. They don't think about how hard it was to write that story when they're looking at the finished product. But there is a process and it is hard.

Unfortunately, I'm at the bottom of the mountain. Fortunately, I'm prepared to climb. I know what needs to be done and I'm pretty sure I have all the tools to do it. I know good writing from bad, amazing plots from the not-so-amazing ones. A pretty large vocabulary from years of reading resides in my head. I even have a completed novel (though that's currently undergoing a huge rewrite, I'm talking the size of the Sun) and a few more okay ideas. I'm lucky enough to have supportive friends and family and the NaNo site when I need real help and suggestions. Here's to hoping it's enough.

My current goal is to get this novel polished enough to actually be worth reading, by an agent, an editor, or just my neighbors. Let me tell you, that's going to require a lot of work and time. The main idea and plot isn't too bad, I suppose, but the writing is pretty much garbage. The reason I'm doing a complete rewrite. It's not going too bad but I have a long way to go. We'll call that my first ledge, shall we?

During this section of the climb, I'm also going to be reading through all 415 of my books. I'm calling it the Reading Trail, training for the climb. I know now is probably not a good time to decide to go on a reading extravaganza but I'm hoping it'll help me relax when I get stressed over getting it just right and show me that if I work hard enough I could be holding my own book, if not soon then someday. I have a list of my books set up on my computer in alphabetical order by the author's last name and the first book on my list is: The Haunting of Derek Stone: City of the Dead & Bayou Dogs by Tony Abbott. I'm going to be posting reviews of the books I read on this blog as well as how my rewriting is going. Here's to hoping I'll have lots to talk about.

I think it's taken me thirty minutes to write this post. XD The result is pretty good though. Wish me luck on narrowing down that time. I'm going to need as much of it as I can get. Now, I'm off to explore the different ways to edit my blog.