National Novel Writing Month!
I actually ‘finished’ this ‘book’, at exactly 50,000 words (by some fluke) on Friday, November 19th at 7:49 pm, at which point my husband suggeted we go out for ice cream . . . I couldn’t validate it until the end of the month. Like all first drafts, or parts of first drafts, it’s terrible! But I plan on spending the next year making it better 🙂
NaNoWriMo Day 1
November 1, 2010: I sat up in bed morning, pulled my laptop close (hoping that my son wasn’t going to wake up quite yet) and started typing. Now, with historical fiction, it doesn’t take very long before a need for research pops up, and I encountered the first after 3 sentences. Why didn’t I do this research earlier? Because I didn’t know what I needed until I’d written those three sentences. This new book is a murder mystery, if I can pull it off, set in Gwynedd in 1143 AD. In real life, Cadwaladr, Owain Gwynedd’s obnoxious brother, has Anarawd, Owain’s future son-in-law, murdered on the eve of his wedding. It is over a land dispute, and Anarawd was ambushed on the road. Once it is determined that Cadwaladr is to blame, Hywel, Owain Gwynedd’s bastard son, is sent to exact retribution Read more…
Writing when it’s hard . . .
“Here’s what it starts to be like for me somewhere in the midsection of a novel: (1) I’ve written the beginning, but I’m pretty sure it’s a pile of crap. (2) The end, when I even dare to contemplate it, feels as far away as Uranus. (3) The prose I’m writing right now, here in the middle, sounds like a stiff little busybody who’s sat down too hard on a nettle. (4) I’ve discovered that my plot, even if it’s an engaging plot, has sections that are not engaging to write, and I’m bogged down in those doldrums sections, when all I want is to move on to the exciting parts that are just ahead —but I can’t, not until I’ve written the parts that will get me there. Boring! (5) The house is strewn with post-it notes on which Read more…
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