I'm obsessing, I know. It's like this novel has suddenly become my life, or something. Dedicated like hell and I'm really working, it's like I actually have a job now all of a sudden. Working at home entirely on my own terms with the best job in the world... could be worse. But it won't pay, not yet at least. Well, that's what it's like with writing something big for the first time. I mean, I have written before, obviously, just nothing amazing enough to send to a publisher. This... it will be great. I just know it already and I've known it all along. I'm just getting all the more certain all the time.
I think I'm getting even better at writing in English even faster than ever before during this process. It's like I've forgotten that English is not my first language. Like, I rarely write in Swedish at all nowadays. It's boring and feels very limited. Not only because I can reach a bigger audience by writing in English, but the vocabulary is so much better. Like, they have words for everything that Swedes don't. I feel more free using English, it's so fun playing with words and phrases thought I sometimes don't know if I'm even half right half the time. Grammar is sometimes hard, a lot harder than spelling is. I might spell wrong on like big words with a lot of consonants, but surely not the simpler words. Unless I'm being sloppy then of course, but that's a different matter.
No, I think I've gotten even better just this last week now. It's amazing how much and how fast I can learn the language. Just looking at how I did when I started writing Grimston Estate two years ago. I got stuck on like every other word and it was so hard just producing one correct sentence. I must have edited the first chapter like ten times or more since I wrote it the first time. The first "edition" of my novel I wrote by hand in Swedish but didn't get very far before I decided to write it on computer and in English instead. Too bad I don't have it saved, the way the first chapter turned out the first time.
Oh well, now I'm writing it so easily, I've found my own language or how to say it and everything... it's just so fluent I amaze myself. If only I was as good at talking in English as I am writing in it, but I very rarely have the need to talk in it. I don't know any non-Swedish speaking people whom I meet and talk to face to face. Maybe when I start school again with English lessons. I'll probably end up being a second teacher though. Ugh... I hate it when that happens, but it is indeed a self esteem boost. To be the walking dictionary whom everyone comes to for guidance and help when the actual teacher is busy somewhere else or they're just too lazy to look it up themselves.
Last year was like that, everyone crowded around me and demanded from me to teach them stuff. Now that I'm even better I'll probably not be able to breathe during those lessons. Learn something more myself? Probably won't happen but I might get a touch up on my talking skills, by simply talking. It's very basic English you get to learn in that class, it's just an introduction course to get you going for the real stuff if you wanna continue studying, which I do, if I have the mental strength to.
I look forward to start school again, it should be fun. Unless I'm extremely busy with with my book by then. At that time (beginning of January) I'll probably be right at it with the editing and chasing of publishers. I look forward to that as well, how intriguing it will be to be almost done with my work that I've worked so hard on in periods for over than two years, by then. And how sad it will be when I'll have to put it behind me when it's all done. How I'll miss my tragic city and tragic characters. But who knows, maybe it could become a movie as well? I'm thinking too much...
I'm getting affectionate for my characters somehow and I suffer with them as they go through their tragic lives. Not as much as they suffer of course, but it does leave a sting in my heart as I tear their lives apart. At first I thought it was gonna be easy, like yeah their lives suck but that's life and I'm gonna make it realistic. But now I'm like, no how sad that that happened to them, how will they be able to go through with it, how will they be able to even go on living without breaking apart? The questions regarding their feelings, how I hurt them and I feel so bad for hurting them.
I'm not even the slightest bit of evil, am I? Because it tears me up so bad, writing tragic stories for fictional characters. Fictional characters! They're not real! Man, I need to toughen up a bit if I'm gonna be able to go through with writing this... It's just a story, just a fictional story in an imaginary world with imaginary characters, how can it be so heart tearing? But alas, that's what it's like with good books. They hook you up and you feel for the characters, even as you know they aren't real. I probably won't be the only one reading it while crying like a baby once it's done.
It will be a sad story, that much I can say, only and already halfway through and already crying and shaking while writing. And it will just get worse. Deeper, more intense, tear jerking and frustrating. I might be a sensitive soul but I hope I will be able to move my readers as well. But you'll have to wait. I'm sure I will get published, one day or another. All I need is time, patience and a lot of effort. I got an infinite resource of the first two (until I die, that is, but it's at least a few more years left until then) and the third I can manage to conjure up. To get published, cause I will, I just don't know when and how. I might sell another piece of my soul for it as well, if I deem it necessary. I'd sell whatever I got to get published. I know that's insane but it's a dream of mine that I've had since I was around twelve years old and first wanted to become a writer. Just don't know what the fuck took me so long to actually start writing...
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