Tolstoy Durden and his Writing Club of Doom

Here stand the rules of Write Club:

1. Don't think, write.
2. DON'T THINK, WRITE!
3. Write now, not tomorrow, not after breakfast, now.
4. If you can't write, read.
5. If you can write, read, then write.
6. Write "with the door closed".
   
7. When writing something for the first time, don't look back, don't edit in place.
8. Edit when you're done writing. That's what a second draft is for.
9. Always ask what your characters would do, not what you want.
10. Story is king. Always listen to the king.
    

This evening I experienced a margin of success writing Paper Girl. After a terse entry in my paper journal, I realized that I was over-thinking my writing. I couldn't get started because I was always worrying if what I was writing was the "right" way to start the story. In the end, I realized it doesn't matter.

I looked over a tenuous beginning I had written some nights ago prior to going to bed. It wasn't terrible, but it could be better. I spent most of my evening expanding and refining the original concept. It feels much more natural now than it did days ago. In the process, I did come up with a few ideas of what to write next.

In On Writing, King described the difficulty had had writing The Stand. He found the beginning the easiest to write as he would focus on a specific character or set of characters each chapter. In later chapters, he'd bring all the characters together. There's much about this idea I find appealing.

My thought is to borrow this mechanic. I'll write a chapter on each character, Novella, Akisa, and then Miki. All three would be moving toward the end of a school year, and the approach of summer vacation. Telling these three separate chapters will allow me to establish some facts about each character and the setting. It will also help to get me to know the characters, and wet my feet in this new process of script writing.

Tonight I have written a portion of Novella's chapter. I have some very good ideas already for Akisa's and Miki's chapters. I'll refrain from thinking further ahead. I'm sure when I get to that point, I'll have more ideas.