Writing My Novel

What have I been writing lately?  Let’s see…besides blogging on here and doing some poetry here and there in a word processor, I scribble ideas down in notepads and notebooks everywhere.  I have them all over the house.

I previously finished writing a contemporary fictional book, about a year ago, that is a semi-autobiographical work about my life.  This was the first book I ever finished.  But I feel like it’s not ripe enough for any further work.  I need more life experiences.  I need to actually learn from these lessons I keep repeating and failing so much of the time.  It must sit in my desk drawer and wait until it’s time to revisit.

I’ve mentioned before in a previous post about a sci-fi fantasy book that I started.  At the time I had only completed about 7500 words.  Now I’m up to about 17,000 words.  I still have quite a bit to go to reach about 100,000 words.  But I feel much more optimistic about reaching my goal and having the end in sight.  I thought it was a lot more like fantasy, but now I think maybe it leans more towards science fiction.

In fantasy, which this is definitely a strong element still, there are a lot of magical and mystical aspects that often cannot be explained.  It doesn’t have to make any sense most of the time.  Things just happen.  People use magic, fly, mythical creatures are at work, etc.  But my book has a logical system to the world.  Everything makes sense in a rational way, at least to me, and is based on the “rules” of this world.  I’m still struggling with trying to reveal this world skillfully in such a method that doesn’t overwhelm the reader with too much narrative or back story.

Over a week ago, my husband and I had a fight and he left to go to the bar for four hours.  It was so difficult for me to deal with being alone and trying to soothe myself from this argument.  So I started writing another book.  This was an idea that I came up with last fall, but never had the chance to do anything but jot ideas down in a notepad.  I wrote the first couple of pages.  It’s yet another fantasy.  It’s about the lessons in life that people fail to learn.

The more I feel the world, the more the characters tell me their story, show me their lives, the more I want to write it.  So I did a bit of writing with this book.

Right now I’m in the middle of writing two books.  I’ll refer to them as the second book (which could potentially be the first book of a trilogy or more) and the third book (which is another fantasy).  I’m also playing around with an idea for a short story.  And I’m working on putting together some poetry to submit to literary magazines.

I’m feeling very hopeful about my dedication to writing.  I’m also feeling very hopeful about my goals of becoming a published writer.  Published in the old-fashioned way.  Only time will tell.

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