Each week we drop a blog here for various reasons. It’s a fun way to look back on a week and see the changes that have commenced, or the progress we have made. It’s also a great way to show the struggles of writers; we’re a team of two women who years ago fell in love with writing, and have been doing it ever since. One week can make a difference, and a lot can happen.
Last week we were able to progress in ways we hadn’t in a long time. A lot of our weeks prior had been filled with sorting through our lot, trying to weed out the minor players and complement the big ones. It was spent trying to get on the same page with the magic of our world, the shape of it, and the look and feel of the realms. We added names to faces, faces to names, and the odd writing we did? We called them trials. That way when it was small and insignificant it didn’t matter – it was only a trial, after all.
It was good for us to do. We’re writing together which means that things that I envision, aren’t necessarily what Clara sees. The thoughts she has on her characters won’t always meet my expectations. Getting to this point had been a struggle enough on it’s own, to figure out what we wanted to do with all of this. We had an idea, it expanded into a project, but then somewhere along the line, something bad happened… It became a chore. For us, writing had always been a way to pass our time, to let our imagination roam free, to enjoy ourselves and yes, we began with the intention of one day publishing but the idea itself had grown out of a fondness for writing.
Which was something we hadn’t been doing for a long, long time. It became a job, sorting through our characters, and once we were done with that and had a break we figured we might as well go through it “one more time.” That was perhaps one of the most common phrases between us lately. It was never one more time. We needed it. We needed to sit ourselves down and think about what it was we wanted to do. Don’t get me wrong, it has been good for us to do that.. We needed to think about what we would need to make it happen. We needed to get on the same page when it came to a plot outline, and the story we wanted to tell.
What we needed even more? To write.
We had a few days of uninterrupted time together, five whole days where nothing in the world could stop us from doing what we love. After monday, the last day of the five day weekend, we hit a total of 62k words. We had essentially written a novel. In five days.
The best part about this? We haven’t stopped. We’re both extremely guilty of slacking off after a few good days because ‘we’ve made progress’. Somehow those words have a knack of turning our brains to jelly and we ride on the high of an accomplished weekend for so long that we start running after the facts again. The weekend after would then proceed to be frustrating, because trying to leap into it all again? Not happening.
This time around we haven’t stopped writing. With work creeping back in we’re not able to spend the same amount of hours on it, but we are keeping it going. We’re still writing, we’re carrying on, and it’s the absolute best feeling in the world.
Let the countdown begin for the next four day weekend!
Charlotte
Charlotte and Clara 