Living with a fail

I took a day off work this Monday to go take my road test as I am working on my driving license. Did I pass? (Spoiler: I didn’t).

So the test did not go as planned. A part of me had been hoping I would breeze through it as that would have been a much better story but when you are learning to drive in a third language, it doesn’t always go as planned. I will not bother you with the details of why I failed but let’s just say I will keep practicing until my next test date in two weeks.

Despite the hectic first week back at work after the Spring Festival holiday and restarting La Marinette up for the spring season （two events back to back Friday night and Saturday,）I did manage to churn out three thousand words. I know what you’re thinking. It’s not a lot. I agree. But, it is still better than none. If you’ve been following the blog you’ll know that this puts me at about a chapter and a half from the end of the first draft.

Failure has been on my mind this week as I get closer to finishing the first draft and after the obligatory rewrites I will have to start passing out my draft to alpha readers to see what they think. Is it good or bad? I feel it’s pretty solid so far but I don’t know if others will agree. Sometimes I look back and cringe at a scene and sometimes I glance over a past chapter and think to myself “Wow did I write that?”

I don’t really enjoy failing but I’ve learned to embrace it as part as life and I always try to not make the same mistake twice. As far as driving goes, I know what I did wrong in the test this time and I will practice to not make those mistakes again. It’s a little harder when it comes to reading. Definitely more drawn out.

I have not had the chance to read anything this week. Any spare time in commuting has been used to fill out the upcoming scene. I did watch an interesting you tube video series on writing, mostly as it pertains to fantasy but also a little to science fiction which was interesting and gave me something to think about as I write the next scene which will be the second half of the finale chapter.

I don’t know how the people in my writer’s workshop group have the time to write out things for the random prompts that get put up. If I had that much extra time to write I would be working on my own projects.

I read somewhere that if you aren’t writing something that you want to get published then you may as well not be writing. It’s a bit harsh and I feel there’s nothing wrong with just writing for the sake of writing but I also feel that (and this is just me) if I didn’t have a goal to be published then I probably wouldn’t be putting this much effort into it. In any case this article will be shorter than normal as I don’t have any new research to discuss but hopefully tomorrow I will get on the next scene and get that done this week.