Validation!

It's everybody's best friend.

No seriously.

I was validated yesterday when I came home from school and my husband told me he read the latest version of the first chapter of my novel.

I have to interject here and say that this poor novel of mine has undergone the equivalent of human teenage years. It laughed, it cried, it was horrible, it was great, and most of all if didn't know what it was. (It didn't help that I came up with the idea when I was fresh into high school.)  It has undergone many drafts, and the furthest I've gotten with it was chapter 9... until I scrapped it again.

BUT! This time I have something. Any my husband validated me and said it was AWESOME. Not perfect, but ten bajillion times better than what I've done in the past.

That's almost intimidating- I almost don't want to keep going on it, so that I don't destroy the awesomeness.

I've discovered that in my writing I tend to "tell" instead of "show". Here's the difference:

 She felt her face grow warm. versus Her face was warm. or even Her face grew warm.

You know which one is better. (That's a horrible example but that's what I pulled out of thin air.) Anyways, I tend to do the first part, telling, instead of letting the reader be in the story. By the time I finished reworking what I had of my first chapter, I had narrowed it down from seven pages to about three. I had four pages of useless junk! Four pages!

Needless to say I've fallen in love with my novel again. I wish I didn't have homework to do so I could just work on it.

But NaNoWriMo is coming up next month, and it's a great excuse to get a good chunk of it down. And I've been getting quite a bit of it done in my basic English class (ugh- let's not talk about that) while my teacher tells stories. Overall I'm excited. Validation! Woohoo!

Creative Writing Class Blues

I haven't really gotten anywhere with my story. I restarted a section of my story, trying to make it more interesting, and that's been fun, but... really, my biggest hangup with writing right now is that I'm in another creative writing class.

Oh, but that should be super awesome, you're thinking. You're learning how to become a better writer!

You don't understand. When my creative writing teacher starts talking principles of creative writing, I apply them to my story- Do I use a lot of tags? It's fantasy, how can I not? What about dialogue? Is my dialogue interesting? Pertinent? Oh man, important descriptions- I have to describe things using senses, and I shouldn't just lump it all in one paragraph... Oh crud, I've been "telling" my reader stuff instead of "showing" them what's going on...

And so on. It's kind of depressing. I haven't written much this semester, although when I do it's usually during my basic English class. (Which I've taken at my previous college but they won't let it transfer so I'm stuck in it again.) And even then sometimes it can be difficult. I wish that my "creative genius" would just flow out of me, and then suddenly SHA-ZAM! there's a print-worthy novel in my lap that everyone will love. Oh, wait, that's another thing I learned in creative writing- it doesn't work like that. Oh well...