patience and persistence

I've been working on being more accountable to myself this week with my writing and I'm proud of the progress I've made. The new set-up seems to be working nicely : )

My biggest struggle overall is getting into my characters, really getting into them, their voices and thoughts and behaviors. It's a long process that I can't say I'm totally enjoying now though I persevere because I can feel the final result and it is going to be awesome. Character development just takes such a long time and that can be disheartening I think. But I realized today [as my husband has been trying to tell me all week whenever I go on a rant] that it's not unusual to take a long time developing your characters. It takes time for everyone and it just makes them that much deeper, your story that much better.

My realization today came from thinking about my friend's webcomic which you can read here [the link is for the cover page, the first page has a little bit of fan service, nothing that shocking, but if you're uncomfortable with that just skip to the second page and you'll be fine]. I'm super excited about this story that she's working on, the main body of which will actually start getting posted early this summer, but the truly amazing thing to me is that she has been working with these characters collectively since we were in the 8th grade and probably long before that on a less cohesive basis. To total that for you, she's been working with the same characters for nine years during which time she has gone through many variations and approaches to story lines and ideas. I've watched her work develop over the years [as an artist since we were friends in kindergarten when we drew with crayons and crayola markers] and I am amazed and impressed by her dedication to this work.

So I have to remind myself to be patient and, in this case, I am glad to have people to compare myself to. People who haven't written instant-success novels or become immediately recognized for their work. There are people out there who can write a best selling novel in three months on their first try, but they're not the rule, they're the exception. And at some point in everyone's career, a project you love is going to take work. But what work could be more rewarding than pursuing something you love through the drudgery of rough drafts, edits, scrapping and new starts?