I’m vacationing in Amsterdam, so I haven’t been able to write every day as I had been. But today, I finally found some time to hang out at a three story cafe and write until I felt too shaky from all the coffee I drank. I believe I finally found Candy’s voice. 

There is a similarity between this narrative and the narrative in The Scribbled Victims. Many readers of The Scribbled Victims don’t realize immediately that it is Orly narrating the book. I drop a hint at it in the very first chapter when she interrupts her storytelling to say that she wished that she looked like Yelena. Because of that, a reviewer criticized me of switching from third person to first person, even though it was first person all along. 

Anyhow, Candy will be narrating the story of a man named Burrows, but similarly it is all in her voice. It should be more clear from the get go this time. Who knows, maybe this style will become my thing. 

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I’m back to writing every day. I think it’s important that I write every day so that I stay present in my work and also because with writing on my mind all day, I’m generally happier and feel less despair working a day job. This idea to start writing every day again came out of a recent session with my psychologist. For the past three years or so, I’ve only been writing on weekends, because I had been feeling so overworked at my day job because of some projects I was involved with. My psychologist at the time and I decided it would be best for my stress level to stop writing every day. It helped with the stress certainly, but it was ultimately a detriment to my happiness and my feeling of having a purpose. Those projects are over now. I don’t know why I didn’t think of going back to writing every day on my own, and needed a therapy session to come up with the idea, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

Needless to say, I am thrilled to be writing every day again. I feel so much more alive. True, I only set a goal to write for thirty minutes a day. But I set an easy goal as a strategy. It’s easy to find thirty minutes in a day. It’s easy to have enough motivation to sit down for only thirty minutes. But the truth is, it never ends after thirty minutes. I become so consumed with what I’m working on that it can go on for hours. And during that time and the hours following, I feel inspired and excited. 

This week I’ve been writing and rewriting a prologue for a novel version of Forever Candy. (It was originally a screenplay.) Though I’m not nearly satisfied with the writing (I don’t think I found the right voice or style for the book), I feel exhilarated just working on it.

 

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