I've 16,336 words towards my novel The Costume Maker, so at this stage I am very confident of making my 50,000 word goal. In fact I'm planning to step it up a bit now and aim for 75,000 words for a good first draft.
The story is coming along well. My characters have found themselves in the magical realm and need to get home. They have encountered dragons, mystery forest creatures and Fairies. The three teenagers are very different characters, although they are just starting to find they do have some things in common.
What I have learned so far...
- If I can set aside the time each day, I can be a writer! Well at least with the quantity of words.
- The novelty of carrying a notepad and whimsically writing up chapters while in restaurants and on walks starts to wear off as far as the rest of the family is concerned.
- Book writing is addictive. My Dad turned up for a visit and has gone home with a notebook with paged filled for the book series I've talked him into writing.
- There are a lot of books on how to write, I can't possibly read them all. BUT, I can BUY them all!
- Plotting rules! see my post on PLOTTING. I wrote lists of anything that could possibly happen in the story and different places the characters would go. This has been fantastic, I've not had to stop to think about what happens next. I wrote all my ideas on index cards and rearrange them to change the story.
- Fantasy works well if every cause has an effect. E.g. through experiments of genetic engineering, my Fairies are almost human size, the consequence however is that they can no longer fly, even though they have wings.
- I like to write to podcasts, my pick are The Creative Penn and Litopia After Dark. Let me know if you have a favourite podcast about writing - I might do up a list soon.
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