Keith

And it’s not even for a class or for a project or anything! I finished it FOR FUN! God, I am so freaking proud of myself right now.

I’ll start Draft 2 next month. After writing almost 7,500 words in the last 24 hours, I need time to decompress a bit. Thank God for good hard cider.

But before I do that, I’m gonna pat myself on the goddamn back for a quick second. I have NEVER been able to finish a first draft, I always get so caught up in minutiae that I end up restarting a whole bunch. But I got overcame those urges and I finally actually finished something I started!

FIRST EVER DRAFT FINISHED.

Started on December 9, 2023. Plot only, no dialogue or descriptive details, just bullet points and general summaries of locations and events.

32,948 words.

Draft 2 will be turning this unit of a draft-outline hybrid into a novel proper.

If I can spark that deep interest in stories in at least one of these kids, then I’ve done a good job. All I can do for now is keep going, keep encouraging and supporting these kiddos as best I can. They’ve got stories worth telling, and I can’t wait to see those stories come to life!

I wish I had had more teachers in my own life who had valued creativity and storytelling. Family, friends, and a couple teachers from my formative years were all I really had. My insatiable curiosity and unquenchable desire to tell stories did the rest of the job, though.

I have a good number of students who are putting themselves outside of comfort zones, trying to be creative when they have never done so before, or have had poor experiences in the past. I’m excited to see what they come up with in their first stories. And they’re excited, too!

Been taking a break from my own writing in order to help my students begin their own journey of creativity. So much of this process has been about fighting the conditioning that they’re not naturally creative, or that they’re not good at it, or that creativity is pointless.

Been a long time since I wrote 2,000 words in an hour. Genuinely starting to think this novel might get finished this year.

The problem with writing a novel that uses real-world events as general reference points for conflict beats: every time I think of something new and say “nah, that wouldn’t happen, nobody would be THAT stupid/awful”, someone goes and proves me wrong.

Bright side: outline progress is consistent!

20 years ago we were suing teenagers for millions of dollars because they were torrenting a single Metallica album and now billionaires are demanding the free right to every work in history, so that they can re-sell it.

The law only ever serves capital.

Setting some time aside this morning to sit and make some genuine progress on my novel’s outline. I’ve been meaning to lately, but have only been able to work on it in tiny little bursts of time. It’ll be nice to settle in and fully immerse myself in the story again. #amwriting #amwritingfantasy

The_EduGamer - Twitch Getting Good, ft. A Beav | The Finals

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Hello people of Bluesky! Some things to know about me:
+Writer of fantasy primarily, but explorer of all genres
+Middle school English teacher
+TTRPG enthusiast

Let’s talk about all the awesome authorial things, how kickass storytelling is, the joys of being creators! ^_^

#writingcommunity