I'm back, and I bring my Nanowrimo novel with me! Yes, I've decided I'm going to do Nanowrimo again this year, and hopefully keep up my two-year winning streak. I'm a little bit late in posting this, as I've been frantically finishing my coursework this past week, but now that uni's over I can focus more on writing.
So, here it is: my novel and a short excerpt. I had a horrible time writing the synopsis. For some strange reason I had a very clear idea of the way the plot was supposed to go, but the minute I tried to put it down on paper, I couldn't do it. I thought the idea behind me novel was so simple, but apparently I was wrong.
Anyway, this is an idea I got in November or December last year, after reading Lauren Kate's Fallen. I think what originally frustrated me was the love-plot that the novel focused on. In essence, a girl dies and is reborn over and over, and an angel who's in love with her keeps seeking her out to make her magically remember that they're soulmates.
This got me thinking about the whole 'destined for each other' thing. I've always been rather unconvinced by the 'soulmates' idea that seems to be so popular in fiction and film, and lately it's started to really actively annoy me.
It struck me as pretty unfair that you should be born over and over again and yet get no choice as to who you're forced to fall in love with. If all that ties you to one person is the memory of a romance in a past life, is it not rather tyrannical to insist that you have to love them in the next life too?
So I took a little break from the Internet - and, in fact, the computer! - over the Easter break (something my Script Frenzy script is now punishing me for) and spent a bit of time reading a bunch of books I've been meaning to finish for a long, long time. One of these was The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott, which has been sitting on my night desk for about three months. No kidding. But I finally finished it and I wanted to post a review on it, seeing as I haven't posted for a while. Plus the fact that I finally finished the book made me want to celebrate a bit. I thought it was a waste to read the book for three months and then just put it back on my shelf. So, with that in mind....
How far would you go to save a sister's life? Would you tell a lie? How much would you sacrifice?
The Heart of Midlothian is a simple story which probably could have been several times shorter than it actually was; it essentially centres around a young woman called Jeanie Deans, whose half-sister is accused of child-murder and sentenced to death. Jeanie, unable to lie in a court of law to save her sister's life (a point which didn't quite sit with me, but more on that later), heads down the long road to London to try and get a pardon for her sister from the King.
Nothing to do in April, as the cold winds begin to roll in and you feel it’s almost socially acceptable for you to wrap yourself in a massive doonah and disappear for months on end, until forced once more out of your little cocoon by the hot weather?
Yeah. That’s how I felt mid-March this year. So I thought I’d try something different. I decided to try out Script Frenzy. What is Script Frenzy, you may ask? Well, it’s to screenwriting what Nanowrimo is to novel-writing. Essentially it challenges you to write a 100-page script – TV, film, stage – in the month of April. Sounds like fun, right? I thought so, while I was pondering how I was going to celebrate the long winter nights that were fast approaching. And so I decided to take a leap into previously uncharted writing territory. Essentially, this was my thought process...
This week for YA Highway's weekly Road Trip Wednesday, the idea is to ask a question:
Although I'm not currently working on a major story or idea, I'd be lying if I said I didn't one day hope to get something into print. Publishing is a long and daunting process, it seems to me, and not a little terrifying.
But my problem seems to be centred more on one thing: I just can't seem to focus on one story long enough to write up a full draft. I have at least fifteen stories that I choose between. I write depending on what mood I'm in, rather like my reading. Do I feel like Fantasy? Tackling the Sci-Fi? Romance? Working on a Fanfiction? Believe me, I've got a semi-finished story in just about every genre.
So my question is this: How do you find that one idea that you feel confident enough about to actually say, yes, this is the story I one day want to hold in my hand as a published book? How do you decide which idea you want to become your official WIP; and how do you stick to it?
