The Struggles of a Novice Writer

Ok, so I'm struggling with my book at the moment.

Despite buying some tools to help the process along, it is going slower than I expected, and I'm struggling with the amount of time I can devote to writing.

I bought WriteItNow to assist with the whole keeping everything in one place thing. I bought a portable keyboard for my mobile, so I could write when I'm not at home, and I read everything I could find on fiction writing (particularly the stuff on Holly's site), over and over again.

Despite all this, the last three chapters have crawled along, and what's worse is that my voice is still in it's infancy, so I'm questioning my choice of words and the amount of detail to put in, and the plot direction at the chapter level. Not good.

I have made all the mistakes I can possibly make at this stage of my career, (Career? Well you've got to call it something haven't you?) , although I was chuffed when I completed the outline of the book. But, looking back at it now, I have made the classic mistake of putting too much detail in the outline. That's definitely not a mistake I'll make again.

I also made the error of not correctly identifying the good scenes, from the bad scenes, in my outline. Some of the scenarios my protagonist gets into are simply links, and as a result my novel will be way too short if follow the outline to it's conclusion. So my spare time, this weekend, will (hopefully) be used to come up with a score of new, action packed, meaningful scenes.

In a nutshell, I am a typical novice. Ouch! But, despite all these mistakes, I am glad I made them. (Well no not really, but you know what I mean!)

I'm a firm believer in learning by making mistakes, and I'm pretty sure that, after making these mistakes, I'll be a much better writer for it.