Day 3

10:09

That's right. I got up at ten. Ten. I must be the most committed writer in the history of the world.

Today I'm going to finish my story, make sure it works from beginning to end. Set myself up to start writing the damned screenplay tomorrow morning.

I'm enjoying this.

13:10

Alright, it's only been a couple of hours of writing, and about 800 words, but I appear to have got to the end of my step outline: the end of my story.

It's not the satisfying feeling I expected. The words, the characters, the actions seem strange, unconvincing, unfinished. I have the urge to work on the whole thing from the beginning, but also feel like putting it away and not looking at it any more.

14:50

I sit down with a glass of water and a print-out: sixteen pages of plot points. I think the only thing I feel more apprehensive about than writing is reading what I've written. Still, no more time to put things off. I've still got twelve hundred words to write. I take out a pen and start looking through it all.

16:00

When I read my stuff, I always start out with the a similar sense of dread. But then, after a while, I think - it can't be that bad. There is promise, here and there. If I just change this, and that... Maybe it can still create that amazing story that seems so exciting in my head.

So, what's wrong? To start with, there are about a million characters and objects that appear, disappear and that never get resolved. Working them out is more like accounting than writing.

A bigger problem is the start: I want to introduce our first main character - and his situation - before we're launched headfirst into the plot and the first big twist. At present, this character-intensive introduction doesn't sit well with the sudden increase of pace at the end of the first act. It will have to change.

Then we have the third act. But we'll come to that another time.

Back to work.

22:00

Six hours of work today: 2014 words. That was a hard slog - in particular, because so much it was about tinkering.

Without the tinkering, this would be pointless, incoherent and utterly worthless It concerns me that I won't have the luxury of fiddling with other ideas as much in the coming months, after all, I gave myself a running start with this first project, in that I had half of a step-outline worked out.

Any new feelings today? A thought - at least.

Ending an idea you've been in love with for years is extremely unsatisfying.

Oh, and today, in Wales, in January, -1º outside: a big fat fly buzzed from nowhere and landed itself on the middle of my laptop screen. Talk about smelling out shit!

word count: 2014
hours writing: 6.5