Novel

Now, it's interesting to write a novel.

I grew up reading some really great stuff. Tolkein, R A Salvatore, Raymond E Feist, and countless other novels in the fantasy and sci-fi genres consumed much of my adolescence. These books seemed so surprising and complex, with characters I could really believe and feel for. It seemed like each person in those books was a living, breathing person who could knock on my door at any moment.

I'm over 31,000 words into my book and things are, indeed, getting complicated. I have three threads going right now (two major, one minor) but I have many of the machinations of several different warring peoples ruminating aside from those.

Next time, a thorough outline is an absolute must. I'm a bit lost and feeling like my people aren't alive quite yet. I often catch myself writing a scene only to suddenly realize that someone did something they shouldn't have done, by their very nature. I have to give each person credit for at least the sense God gave billy goats. That makes things a whole lot less convenient from a development standpoint.

As I stump through the wilderness of a new world that I'm giving birth to even as I gestate it, I realize that honesty in writing is very hard. Writing what is real is hard. Someone gets a splinter, but do we care? Someone swims for twelve hours in an ocean, and is it worth noting that their clothing is salt crusted and they can never stand the taste of fish for the rest of their life?

-sigh- I often wonder what I got myself into. I'm over my head as I reach for the level of riveting involvement some of my favorite authors can invoke, but I don't have the tools or expertise to pull it off yet.

But I'm going to finish. I may be plodding along right now but I think I have enough story in me to get to the goal this year. Brian, you'll very likely win the word count war, but I'll be ecstatic just to get to the fifty thousand mark.

And then I'm going to sit down and rewrite the entire damn thing.


PS, I feel like a middle school kid for getting all excited over this, but my heroine just found the foundation of her learning experience and is now fumbling around, trying to make sense of it. And it involved getting her first kiss.

Squee!!!