Most of my focus over the past few months has been on Novel Writing. Unfortunately, that has received much less activity than I would like it to. While my goals have been to move further ahead with Keptosh, things have kind of fallen flat most of the time. I managed to finish an outline and start the storyboard. The storyboard is where I am currently hung up. I have attempted a few different strategies for moving the novel along but most of them just end up wasting time. My inability to focus on one project at a time is a major weakness. I always feel that I have so much to do. So while I put the focus on the Novel I get distracted with the other projects and generally end up getting no where with any of it. My hope is to combat this writer's block by setting some public deadlines here in my blog. Obligations to reach certain milestones within the process which I will feel guilty about if I fail to reach them. I recently attempted this strategy with a co-worker. Telling him about a goal I had set myself in October. While I missed the overall goal I did get a large amount of work accomplished during that time. So it is obviously a decent motivational tool to share deadlines with others. At least, so long as they aren’t depending on that deadline. Writing a novel has not been an easy goal to achieve. I feel that there is a difference between a writer and a novelist. I think a lot of people have what it takes to be a great writer, but not a novelist. For me, I fear that it is the opposite. I am by no means a great, or even good, writer, but I feel that I have a decent shot at putting out an adequate novel. I attribute this to the Hero’s Journey model and many others like it. Basically, the key is to learn the elements of good story telling, not necessarily story writing. In the end you can plug certain things into the story to make it take a shape. From there, flesh out enough scenes that cover those core mythological struggles. Once you are down to the scenes, trying to understand how rhythm plays a part in both single scenes and strings of scenes is key. The result of using the toolset is the construction of a novel. I see it more as a step by step assembly process. With that view of novel writing it certainly boosts my confidence and helps me believe that I can finish my Keptosh novel. later, -junc