My Goal for this Blog

Stats:
Time spent writing today: 60 minutes
Words written today: 397
Time spent writing so far: 48.2 hours
Number of words: 23451

My goal for this blog: I want the blog to show people my writing process, the anatomy of the novel that I'm writing. I'll also talk about how I'm marketing my writing, what it's like to be an author in the year 2021 and what's involved in trying to build an audience.

But first, some disclaimers:
I'm pretty new to writing. I love it, and I want to make it my career, but there are lots of people that know much more than I do. This isn't a website for people who want to know the best way of doing things or to get advice from an expert. The goal of this website is to show people like me, who don't have much experience, that it is possible to become a writer. I'm hoping that it is possible, and that I'll succeed! I think seeing my successes and my failures will help other writers like me to succeed in the future.

I know I said there would be some disclaimers, but that's actually the only one I can think of for now. So I guess that was one disclaimer.

I am hosting my blog on Ghost. I've never used it before, but it seems like it has been pretty quick to set it up, so hopefully it will work well.

In my novel, I am planning to write about a character who loves video games and eventually becomes a famous video game designer. But the focus of the current story is on a period of his life when he is dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression. I want to show how hard it is to combat these feelings of anxiety and depression.

One of my favorite online games is Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest - http://www.depressionquest.com/
If you've never played it before, you should check it out! It's fantastic.

It shows what it's really like to be depressed, how even when you try to make good choices you can find yourself in a fog, and unable to push through and do things that you know would help you. You even have trouble believing that anything could help you at all.

Since my main character eventually becomes a video game designer, I am planning to structure the novel like it is a video game that the reader is playing. There will be sections of the novel that will read like game play, like a choose your own adventure novel. Of course, it's not actually a video game, and you don't actually get to choose, but it might make an interesting conceit. It also may make it confusing and difficult to read, so I am trying to think about how to make it accessible.

I'm not sure trying to come up with a creative approach to novel design is a great plan for your first novel, but that seems to be what I'm doing. I'll keep y'all posted!