#1 Tara's Writer Diary

Below is the diary I started writing in April of this year. I am using it to document my work on my work-in-progress novel, Campfyre, formerly known as Vampyre, as I navigate through this harrowing little thing called life. This week I am including posts from April, 2019.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

“[This] hard knot in which my brain has been so tight spun” for me is Vampyre (Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, p. 167) I am trying to undue that knot this CampNanoWriMo 2019. It’s a tough knot, but I am persistent!

I accidentally typed Campfyre above, and now I am stuck on this name for the book. It could actually be the metaphor I have been looking for!

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Slowly but surely I am making my way through my notes, leaving “breadcrumbs” for myself and notating where I need to sync up notes. I am now pulling out bolded notes on subplots, timelines, time-frames, character work, and hard questions, and making separate documents for each. I have already made a couple of documents, like Hard Questions and for the Climax.

I am tired, and my body is reacting from sitting at this computer all day. Oy. I want to write poems about my book. How do I go about doing that?

Monday, April 22, 2019

I'm starting to get sleepy when I'm working on Vampyre, I figure because I've been editing so relentlessly that I'm tired!

Thursday, April 25, 2019

I’m doing the questions that Shelli gave me for deciding if school is the right option. As I open up Seattle University tuition pricing, I have discovered that not only was the original price more than $40,000, but it was $45,700 and after all of the books and fees the grand total is $65,000. Now, granted I have gotten all these amazing scholarships and that doesn’t change the price tag that I originally knew that I would be owing, which after it is all said and done would be $24,000. What is important is the crushing weight bearing down on my chest as I go through this. And this led to me considering going to the east coast for school and the conversation that Shelli and I had about how difficult full-time school is for me. If I had to do it part-time away from Seattle, that is just not going work for me. I can’t drag this school thing out for years on end just to do it part-time. Let alone how much more that would cost me because I would not have any scholarships or financial aid to help me as a part-time student. So I guess what I’m saying is that my best option for myself is to stick with individual classes that are geared directly towards what I want to learn. I have been learning that I can take individual classes in astronomy. You can take individual classes on pretty much any subject and not have the enormous price tag of the university. I guess I feel bad because I have put a lot of the schools through some considerable time trying to complete my applications and the end result is going to be me turning it down even if I do get in. I feel like I’m having them do all this work for nothing; however, this is why people don’t accept the school’s offer of admission right away, because they are trying to figure out if it’s going to work for them.

Meanwhile, on the writing side, I am no longer exhausted as I work on “My Notes, My Notes, My Notes”, however, I feel the enormous weight of this complicated plot as I go through the document for the third time. It means I’m doing something right.