Weekly Update

For this week I focused on jotting down ideas for scenes that will add deeper details to my novel in regards to the relationships within the different characters in my story. While I was doing this I felt like they were like little planning sessions where I was trying to think about ideas and at the same time tried to map out where will these ideas be included.

As I was writing some of these along with just writing in general, I found myself knowing where I was going to blend some of these as I was doing the writing. Sometimes the story itself will guide you as to where things go and how will they unfold and I appreciated having some of these moments since it’s a bit stressful to try to find the right place for all the different events happening in the story.

This semester has definitely gone by very quickly. But let’s do what the pic below suggest J

I look forward to seeing you all next week! 

Blog update

I can’t do this blog post without first saying: I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! J

My thesis project is moving along well. The more I read it and work on it, the more tweaks I do here and there for the section I’ve already written. I’ve also been working on the development of the different voices in my story. I’ve been trying to connect more with my characters to be able to write and allow the story to flow in the most organic way possible.

I’ve also received feedback from Dr. Zamora and have been working on her suggestions. I was very nervous to share my work at first but I am excited about the feedback I received. Some of her comments made me think about where in the story I should be adding scenes that describe more in depth the feelings and experiences my characters are going through to best satisfy the readers and make them connect with all the characters in the story. I am having some trouble locating and blending the new scenes with the existing story so what I decided to do for now was to write them in a separate section and have it ready to later blend it with the rest of the story.

For the different voices I have for my story, I decided to do the same. I am still at a drafting stage in my novel and feel like the best thing to do for now, when I get stock on deciding where to plug in the new voices, is to just write and worry about blending and connecting where appropriate later.

As I move forward, I will continue to draft my novel. I feel like I have done a lot thus far but still have more writing to go. 

Feeling a little disconnected…

I’ve continued working on my novel this week. Writing and revising. I’ve tried to not do so much revising or editing as I am writing because that usually slows me down or frustrates me. I found myself at time writing something and then immediately going back to edit it. When I caught myself doing that, I tried to continue writing unless it was completely necessary to adjust something. At times this week, I also felt a little disconnected from my novel. While my novel’s story line and my own life have never been exactly the same, I’ve always felt connected to my story and my characters. This week however, I have not felt the same. Let me give you an example of one of the times where I’ve felt disconnected. My character is not looking forward to the holidays at all. She is dreading the fact that she is driving back home for school’s winter break (she’s a college student) while I, on the other hand, am completely excited about the holidays almost being here. I have a ton of family coming over to celebrate together and I am just not feeling connected with my novel this week. I don’t think I was able to handle this disconnect very well this week as I felt pretty frustrated about it but hopefully I can manage to calm my excitement about the holidays and write about what my character is going through. For this coming week I am planning on writing different chapters of my novel where there are happy things going on and see how that works out. Experiencing this type of disconnect has been very weird to me because it hasn’t really happen to me in such way before. I have not always experience the same situations my characters have but I’ve managed to write and focus in their lives and not mine. We’ll see how things move along in the coming final weeks of the semester.  

Another Week of Writing... :)

This week I worked on my novel. I wrote for majority of the week and also revised as I was going and when I was done with certain sections. I worked on changing who was telling the story in several of the chapters I already had. I also jotted down notes about who will be telling the story in the chapters to come. My overall goal with that is to have several characters tell the story so that I could have the different points of view show in the overall novel. I also worked on the order in which I’ll have the chapters flow. I am having a little trouble with that. I keep changing the order and I am still not sure which order will work best for the story. I want to make sure that my audience becomes engaged with the novel and I think that if I have the right order I will be able to engage them. My novel is moving along and I hope it continues to move along without major issues. 

Weekly update

This week I don’t have much to write for my weekly blog but I didn’t want to just skip a week without giving some info. I didn’t do any research reading this week. Rather, I focused on my novel and reading creative fiction work. The week went by really fast which made me extremely nervous because I feel like I didn’t do a whole lot of writing. I don’t think I was as disciplined this week as I have been on others so I scheduled blocks of time in my planner to get back on track. Hopefully I can get more work done without feeling that time it’s just flying by. 

Weekly update

This week I’ve been doing less reading and more revising and writing. Just adding here and deleting there. I think the way I’ve set up the chapters I have so far are good but there is still more developing I need to do.

Having done so much research about my topic along with reading pieces that talk about my topic, has been really helpful. I admire the way these authors have set up their stories and the way their stories flow through is very impressive. I enjoyed reading the dialogues in their stories, like I normally do when I read fiction, and hope my novel comes out as engaging as theirs. One of the main goals I have for my novel is to actually have it published so reading published work has been an inspiration when developing my novel.

As I revise, I’ve tried to put myself in my readers’ shoes and I’ve tried to analyze and see if what I think I am saying is truly what I am showing in my story. Not every part of the process so far has been fun but all has been helpful to what I have so far for my project. The readings I’ve enjoyed the most thus far has been reading the creative work, I’ve been engaged and even laughed at times with certain lines of the stories and I’m hopeful my reader will feel the same way once my novel is done and one day published.  

Fifth blog of the semester…

Wow this is already the fifth blog we are writing this semester. This past week has gone by very quickly for me. I’ve worked on my Lit Review and it’s coming out pretty well, I think. Just putting the final touches. There were days where I just could not get myself to work on it so I decided to solely work on my novel instead. I was very exciting to work on my novel this week. New ideas are floating in my head and I’ve been revising a lot. I think I will definitely be rearranging the chapters because as I revised I am catching that the story seems to focus more on certain relationships the main characters have and this is taking away from the main story line. I’ve been also loosely working on titles for the different chapter to help the story find its focus.

When I was able to get myself to work on my Lit Review I enjoyed seeing that I was getting work done because it made me feel productive and less frustrated. I understand that I am not always going to be able to produce and produce every time I work on my thesis project so I have to work on what I can when I have the time.

This week I also had what I like to call thinking sessions which is where I just thought about my novel and tried to picture where is my thesis project going. This helped me see the future of the story and helped me see where I needed to move things around and add some more. In the revision process of my novel this week I also indicated sections where I’ll be inserting scenes rather than telling the story. It has always been a struggle for me to show more and tell less. It’s so easy to say do more showing and less telling when you are commenting on some else’s story but so hard to actually get that done on yours. Overall, I continue to look forward to my thesis project and I’m trying to move along as much as I can.

Weekly Update…

There were moments this week where I felt really engaged with the readings I’ve been doing for my Lit Review and others where I wasn’t sure if what I was reading was going to be beneficial for my thesis. I remember that in conversation during our first group meeting we talked about the research that I would be finding not necessarily affecting or directing how I would be developing my characters. I had to remind myself that because at times I felt like I had to adjust my novel according to what research was saying. However, research was not always saying that same thing. It is extremely beneficial for me to see different perspectives and this way have the knowledge and confidence to lead my novel where it needs to be.

This week, I had the opportunity to talk about my thesis with some friends and coworkers. While many of my coworkers have been asking about how my thesis is going, I had not felt confident enough yet to explain what I was aiming to accomplish for my thesis. I was able to talk to some of my coworkers about it this week and actually explained to them my goals and how has my process been going. The conversations went better than I expected. I actually now know about this person (a friend of my coworker) that is working on writing her book where she’ll be telling the stories of a variety of females from different races and ethnicities and how has their relationship with their mothers shaped who they are today. I might be participating in the research the author will be doing and perhaps become one of the participants that tell their story in her book. Hearing about her book got me more excited and motivated about my novel. As I talked with my coworker about my thesis project, she had really good questions for me that got me thinking about how I’ll be developing my story. She asked me if I’m going to talk in my novel about how my characters cope with having divorced parents and celebrating special life events such as birthdays, holidays and graduations. She also asked me if I’m going to be showing how my characters’ relationship is with their siblings as opposed to how is their relationship with their half-siblings. These were subjects I’ve been touching upon and developing in my novel and I was excited to see she showed interest towards them.

Overall, I feel I had a good week working on my thesis. I am still excited and motivated to work on it. I am nervous about the deadlines and the fear that I might experience writers block or lack of motivation to keep going. However, I am just trying to stay as positive as I can and keep going with the process. 

Moving along...

I had another week of heavy reading and taking notes for my lit review. Some nights I also worked on my actual novel. I didn’t do much of new writing but I did revise a good amount of the draft I have. I rearranged the order in which some events are happening in the novel. I also revised some of the dialogue in the novel where I felt needed improvement. I am working on a loose outline so that I can have a map of where my novel will be going.

As for the readings for my lit review, I’ve really enjoyed the readings so far because I was able to find studies that talked about divorce effects on children of all ages. I found some studies that focused on younger children, like preschoolers, while other focused on teenagers and young adults. I think this is so far very helpful because the characters in my novel get older as the story progresses.

There were a couple of nights this week where I didn’t work on my project as much as I would’ve liked but I think that I was still able to get enough work done so that I wouldn’t feel like I needed to panic. I’m not sure if it’s safe to say that this was okay since we are still early in the process. I feel like there is a lot to still do but hopefully working on my novel along with the lit review will work out well. I feel like I have to take advantage of the moments where I feel inspired because I never know when there will be nights where I won’t be able to work on my project.

There is still much more to do but one of the things I need to do within the next week is find existing YA novels that talk about divorce effects on children and young adults. While I’ve read some stories that touch upon that, I feel like I need to do more research on this. 

Blog 2

It’s been a hard week, lots of reading and researching. I’ve made side notes on what I’ve read and I’ve underlined. But I have not yet started an official draft of my Lit Review. On some of my sources I have longer side notes that on others so that's kind of an unofficial draft of my Lit Review but I am still unsure what my draft will look like. I am trying to focus on reading and researching and understanding what I find. I’ve been trying to focus on finding information related to how children are affected (positive or negative way) when being raise in a broken family.

The topic itself remains very interesting to me but I still don’t know which sources I’ll be using for my Lit Review. It seems so far like the sources I’ve found talk about how parents sometimes think that by staying together they are helping the kids. From what I’ve read, research has shown that that is not always the case. While children will rather to see their parents together, they do not want to have them together under the same roof fighting with each other all the time. When I read that, I also research about whether or not is healthy to argue in front of the children. I found so far that some level of argument is actually healthy to have in front of the children so that they can see how mom and dad work things out even when they argue. But it is not healthy when the argument gets out of control or turns violent.

As for my actual novel, I took out all my crazy drafts that I’ve worked on over time. I am planning on re-reading the “final draft” I have and then looking at the older drafts when needed. I will also be working on revising and drafting more my novel. I am excited because the research I’ve found so far has motivated me to draft more. Blogging was helpful this week as well because I can see that I need to research more and start drafting my Lit Review. 

Thinking about my thesis topic...

This week I focused on brainstorming about topics for my thesis. I knew that I wanted to do something creative for my final project and I also knew I had creative writing projects that I had started but had not yet finished. In particular I had a YA novel I started writing a while back. As I thought about my thesis I decided that it would be great to incorporate my YA novel into the thesis and research more on the topic of the novel itself.

I spent most of my time this week thinking about my story, reading sections of what I have written already and thinking about what goals I had in mind when I started writing it. One of my goals was to write something I could publish and have printed copies of it. While this is a more traditional route I am excited to see how I could create a digital version of my thesis.