When I was in Primary School, we used to sing a hymn that began: "I'm going to paint a perfect picture, a world of make believe..." Creating a fictional fantasy world is something that many authors who write in the fantasy vein have to do and it was also something that I had to do today to prepare to write my novel.
I have to admit it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, afterall how do you create a world from scratch. My earliest design started as a large diamond shape made up of 4 diamond shapes (the 4 kingdoms making up my world) but I quickly realised that this wasn't suitable fof my needs. Being a bit stuck I decided to seek help a la google, so I typed in 'how to create a fantasy world' by which I found a link to Holly Lisle's website http://hollylisle.com/. Holly is a published fantasy author with some great tips to wannabe writers and using her help and that of my artistic house mate I was able to create my world.
Creating the world and the objects in it was the easy part, naming all of the villages, towns, rivers, forests, deserts, mountain ranges, oceans and lakes was the difficult part. That's the part which has taken me hours, through dozens of internet searches from river names locally to latin translation websites I looked everywhere trying to name everything. It's not happened, my main mountain range which all my characters will have at some point have to cross still hasn't be named but I will cross that bridge (or should I say mountain) when I get to it. :-)
The next stage for me was to download pictures of the various places that I have imagined for my book. I am no great artist and can barely draw to save my life, so I have been googling for images and have also been using Deviant Art which is where my background image of my fairytale castle comes from.
I thought researching my previous novel which was set in the 18th Century was hard as i was trying to be as realistic as possible in terms of architecture,fashion, history and customs; but this fantasy novel which I have free rein on is so much more difficult to write as I am having to literally make things up as I go. At least I can use the internet to help me, I don't know how writers such as Tolkien and C S Lewis coped with out it when creating Middle Earth and Narnia. I don't even know where they came up with some of the names from. All I can say is that they must have had amazingly overactive imaginations.
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Happy Birthday!
It's a very special day today as two very important people were born on this date. My sister was born 22 years today and ruined my chances of being an only child forever :-P . As for the other very special lady, I think it would be fair to say that "it is a truth universally acknowledged" that she is very well known would have been celebrating her 235th birthday had she been alive today.
I am of course talking about Jane Austen, author of my favourite novel Pride and Prejudice. She has been a huge influence on my writing and I absolutely love all of her books. I have to confess something to you though. I only properly discovered Jane Austen earlier this year. I had heard of her of course but I had never read any of her books or seen their televised adaptations- it's very embarassing to me having to admit this to you.
For christmas last year, I was given 100 Classic books for the Nintendo DS and seeing the novel on there I decided to give it a go and ever since then I am quite literally hooked on Austen to the point of obsession. After reading the rest of her novels and falling in love with Mr Darcy I felt inspire to write again, despite having never written anything other than fanfiction and the odd few stories in my childhood.
It was P&P which made me feel like I could do anything, and that was when my first novel idea popped into my head. It's an incomplete Regency story with the powerful head strong Austen inspired heroine and a multidimensional male lead. Incomplete as it may be, the idea that I had got me writing again, and I think that had I not read p&p I would not have completed my first novel in Nano and would not be sat here typing this now.
I am of course talking about Jane Austen, author of my favourite novel Pride and Prejudice. She has been a huge influence on my writing and I absolutely love all of her books. I have to confess something to you though. I only properly discovered Jane Austen earlier this year. I had heard of her of course but I had never read any of her books or seen their televised adaptations- it's very embarassing to me having to admit this to you.
For christmas last year, I was given 100 Classic books for the Nintendo DS and seeing the novel on there I decided to give it a go and ever since then I am quite literally hooked on Austen to the point of obsession. After reading the rest of her novels and falling in love with Mr Darcy I felt inspire to write again, despite having never written anything other than fanfiction and the odd few stories in my childhood.
It was P&P which made me feel like I could do anything, and that was when my first novel idea popped into my head. It's an incomplete Regency story with the powerful head strong Austen inspired heroine and a multidimensional male lead. Incomplete as it may be, the idea that I had got me writing again, and I think that had I not read p&p I would not have completed my first novel in Nano and would not be sat here typing this now.
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Good Tidings we bring...
I have excellent news which I wanted to share with all of you. I am pleased to finally announce that I have completed my first draft of my novel 'the stepmother'. I have decided to leave the editing of the novel until after christmas and have a short break from writing.
I have to say I am very relieved to have finished. Once nano had ended i found it increasingly difficult to keep the momentum going despite the fact that i only had 3 chapters to write after the end of nano. This normally would have taken me 3 days and no more than a week, but for some reason i found it incredibly difficult to write. It wasn't so much because i did not know what to write, because i did but i just couldn't sit down and do it. I had lost my motivation.
I was talking to my sister yesterday, who is unemployed as a result of government cuts brought on by the financial crisis. She is very depressed about it and I am trying to help her by giving her something to focus on each day, and knowing that she is a fan of the Twilight Saga and a reader of fanfiction, I suggested that she write her own story. My sister is not a writer and creator of stories as i am but she is a good poet, she told me she would not know what to write about. I am not very familliar with twilight- haven't read or seen and don't intend to (not into vampires or werewolfs at all)- I asked her to imagine that two of the characters were in the back of my car right at that moment and i asked her to think about what they would talk about. We had a short discussion about it and upon my return i decided to try out my own advice in a roundabout way and wrote a letter to my MC. It really helped me and i think i may have been suffering from a mild case of writers block. Nevertheless that block has now been lifted and today I wrote the last two chapters without any problems.
As a result of the completion of this draft I shall be updating my blog over the next few days, but i do intend to keep this going. I have another idea for a novel which has been bubbling under since mid nano and I intend to write that, and then go back and edit 'The stepmother'. I will use this blog to continue to show my daily trials with writing and documenting my efforts where possible.
I have to say I am very relieved to have finished. Once nano had ended i found it increasingly difficult to keep the momentum going despite the fact that i only had 3 chapters to write after the end of nano. This normally would have taken me 3 days and no more than a week, but for some reason i found it incredibly difficult to write. It wasn't so much because i did not know what to write, because i did but i just couldn't sit down and do it. I had lost my motivation.
I was talking to my sister yesterday, who is unemployed as a result of government cuts brought on by the financial crisis. She is very depressed about it and I am trying to help her by giving her something to focus on each day, and knowing that she is a fan of the Twilight Saga and a reader of fanfiction, I suggested that she write her own story. My sister is not a writer and creator of stories as i am but she is a good poet, she told me she would not know what to write about. I am not very familliar with twilight- haven't read or seen and don't intend to (not into vampires or werewolfs at all)- I asked her to imagine that two of the characters were in the back of my car right at that moment and i asked her to think about what they would talk about. We had a short discussion about it and upon my return i decided to try out my own advice in a roundabout way and wrote a letter to my MC. It really helped me and i think i may have been suffering from a mild case of writers block. Nevertheless that block has now been lifted and today I wrote the last two chapters without any problems.
As a result of the completion of this draft I shall be updating my blog over the next few days, but i do intend to keep this going. I have another idea for a novel which has been bubbling under since mid nano and I intend to write that, and then go back and edit 'The stepmother'. I will use this blog to continue to show my daily trials with writing and documenting my efforts where possible.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
So I succeeded...
Hey readers, it's me I am back for good as Take That once sang. This last month has been tricky and I found it next to impossible to keep my blog and novel for Nano going at the same time, and as a result the blog suffered. On a more positive note I did manage to hit my 50,000 words for Nano and am officially a winner (Yay!) I do still have some work to do and have three more chapters to write but the end is certainly near and this makes me so very happy.
The problem I have now is motivating myself to write those last three chapters to finish, now that nano has finished the pressure has been relieved and as a result I haven't finished like I should have done, and this is something I seriously need to get on and do, especially as I know I will feel so much better when it is done. Strangely enough the next few chapters should be some of the easiest to write and I have them planned out in detail in my head. I just have to sit down and convince myself to do it.
I actually have quite a busy weekend ahead of me, I am out all day tomorrow, I am out tomorrow night, working saturday, and then out saturday night so I do have limited time available, but I shall persevere and get this novel finished if it kills me.
On a slightly different subject, I understand that Amanda Vickery's series on the Georgians began tonight although unfortunately I missed it. I hope to watch this over the next few days and once I have I will post a review for it.
Will be in touch soon xxx
The problem I have now is motivating myself to write those last three chapters to finish, now that nano has finished the pressure has been relieved and as a result I haven't finished like I should have done, and this is something I seriously need to get on and do, especially as I know I will feel so much better when it is done. Strangely enough the next few chapters should be some of the easiest to write and I have them planned out in detail in my head. I just have to sit down and convince myself to do it.
I actually have quite a busy weekend ahead of me, I am out all day tomorrow, I am out tomorrow night, working saturday, and then out saturday night so I do have limited time available, but I shall persevere and get this novel finished if it kills me.
On a slightly different subject, I understand that Amanda Vickery's series on the Georgians began tonight although unfortunately I missed it. I hope to watch this over the next few days and once I have I will post a review for it.
Will be in touch soon xxx
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