10 reasons I hate editing

So it's been a few days since we've blogged, but Houdini and I have been submerged in several hundred pages of paper editing my novel. We are nowhere near finished and I am beginning to hate doing this, but it has to be done. Reading out my novel to Houdini didn't work out too great. My throat gave out so she went hunting on plot bunny island. Unfortunately she came back empty handed so she is in bad books at the moment.

Anyway here are the 10 reasons I hate editing:

1. It's time consuming
2. Correcting grammatical and sentence structure errors is soul destroying
3. Getting 1/3 of the way through editing and realising that the dates in your timeline are completely wrong or that events are completely impossible and everything has to be changed
4. There's so much to do
5. Having to rewrite entire chapters because some were written at unholy hours as part of Nanowrimo and make no sense at all
6. Realising that you've accidentally borrowed a character from somewhere else
7. You changed the name of your character half way and have to go back and change it, but then you forget why you changed it in the first place and go back to the old way, once changed you remember why you changed it and then have to change it back again.
8. You realise that you need to do some more research to check your info is correct, but you've taken the books back to the library and the info isn't on wikipedia
9. You find characters who were going to be part of the original subplot simply disappear or 'morph' into other people
10. You find you've accidently deleted a chapter when writing, or you have to delete an entire chapter which seemed like a great idea at the time and took ages but really doesn't work

If you have any of your own please feel free to post below.

A word from Houdini...

Hello vacant minds,

My name is Houdini the cat and my silly owner has left her laptop open, so I thought I'd type a few words and introduce myself. Firstly, a few words about me: I'm three years old and I can read and type. My hobbies are escaping from closed rooms, playing with my toys and making a mess wherever I go. I also like foraging for plot bunnies to confuse my owner and helping her write her stories.




Today I've been helping Thistle to edit her first novel 'The Stepmother'. As Thistle read her novel to me I was kind enough to point out errors in spelling, capitalisation and grammar. I even corrected some of the errors myself.

I haven't read any books before although I do like watching the occasional tv programme and film, but I thought that the first chapter of the book was good, but Thistle tells me there are another thirty chapters or so to go.

Fortunately, after every chapter she has been feeding me treats, although I have noticed that the less mistakes I spot the more treats she gives me. I know it's cheeky but to be honest I'd rather eat the treats than edit a novel

Don't tell Thistle that though will you?

Giving up and starting something new

I have been working on my current novel on and off since just before christmas. The novel is in the fantasy genre about a modern day girl ending up in a fantasy world similar to Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and the Narnia adventures.

I came to a decision about this novel today which is that I think it's time I gave it up at least for the time being. I'm not feeling the words, I'm struggling to write it and not due to writers block, I just don't hear my characters voices and my heart isn't in it. To be fair I have done much on it, I have written the first chapter three times and it still doesn't feel right and I've done the second chapter twice.

I have actually found writing this hard because of the total fantasy element of it, everything I write even the landscape has to be totally improvised and it is proving to be much harder than i thought. The novel is written down in terms of what happens beginining to end in a synopsis format so hopefully I can return to it in the future, and I even have a map I drew of the fantasy world which my character enters and travels through. Truth is the enthusiasm has gone and I am no longer enjoying this project, looking back I can't remember the last time I did enjoy writing or thinking about this without the sense of dread that went with it.

Now although I may be putting my fantasy novel on the back burner that doesn't mean I will stop writing or blogging. In fact I have another novel idea which has been in the pipeline for longer than my fantasy novel and it is that idea that I am full of enthusiasm for writing for. I am going to write another historical fiction story but unlike "The stepmother" which is based on characters who didn't exist but lived in a historical period, this novel will actually be based on a real person. I don't want to give too much away, but the new project will have the working title "The Orphan Princess."

So anyway I'm off now to go and play with my new plot bunnies.

Eating, Praying and Loving

I'm currently reading the novel 'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert and I have to say it's very different to the books I normally read. I had heard of this book having seen the trailer's for the film starring Julia Roberts, but despite being a fan of Julia, I didn't find the film appealing and decided not to see it.

At work I came across a copy of the book, which belonged to a colleague and one evening I picked it up and had a look and started reading the first few pages. It seemed quite good, I like the voice telling the story and as we were quiet at work and I was bored I carried on reading it. Having now read two thirds of the book I have to say that it's quite good, I particularly liked the 'Eat' or Italy part of the book and it has certainly made me think about a few things.

One of the question's the author is asked on her journeys is what is her word? The word which describes her and it got me thinking what would my word be? I'd like to think that my word could be writer or dreamer. but I can think of other words too like procrastinator, optimist, aspiring or caring. There are probably many more words that have slipped my mind right now, perhaps some that I don't think apply but other people may do.

I tried to apply the same idea to my main character, but I don't think her character is developed enough yet for me to be able to identify a word for her, and I'm barely qualified as someone who cannot do the same for myself. I think instead I shall continue with the writing whilst Eating (to keep me going), praying (that I will finish it) and Loving (the writing I'm doing and what i am actually writing).

In the meantime Eat Pray Love is at the top of my list of movies I want to rent.

Painting the Perfect Picture

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.

You're only as good as you think you are

Well it's been a very busy couple of days for me, what with trips to ikea in Bristol for bookcases, new car batteries and then back to work today. I've got to tell you that I'm a bit knackered.

I had planned this weekend to go to a pre-Nano meet up but I ended up waiting in all day for a plumber... who then didn't turn up, so I didn't go. I should have instead spent the day working on chapter 12 whilst waiting for him to arrive, but I didn't.

It's strange as I had been looking forward to writing this particular chapter since I started writing the novel's first chapter, but I found it difficult to sit down and write it, not so much due to time constraints, but due to the excuses I kept coming up with not to write it. Finally, I forced myself to start, and tonight prior to this post I have written 2000 words or so, and I think I know why I had such trouble just getting on with it.

Chapter 12 is a very important part of the whole book and features some hugely key scenes and the deaths of some characters and these deaths are pivotal in my novel as they set my MC on her path of destiny so to speak. When I planned the novel in my head, I imagined that it would be a great thing to write, words would come easily to me and it would show off my writing talent to it's full potential. I thought that when I read it back I would go 'Wow, that's amazing! I wrote that'.

So what was the problem?

I had put so much pressure on myself to make this an excellent chapter and planned things so well that when it came to writing it I was scared. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do such great ideas (which I think they are) justice and then this would affect the tone of the whole book and in effect demotivate me and ruin the novel. So I procrastinated and thought negative thoughts and this reinforced my negativity towards the chapter to the extent that I was dreading writing it. In the end my only solution to the problem was to 'just write', and so laptop in hand and opening line ready I just...wrote. It has been the hardest chapter I have had to write so far in terms of just doing it and it is the only one I have not completed in one go when I had the opportunity (I did one chapter the other day in 2 sittings because I had to go out).

So what happens next?

I know that it will be a few days now until my next chapter (and next post too), now that I am working and also I won't have time tomorrow due to shift patterns at work, dance class after work and just generally lack of free time, so I am targeting myself to finish the chapter by the end of the week, and then I will go from there. I may post less often this week for the same reason so apologies in advance for this.

On another note Nano starts in less than a week - yay!- and I am faced with a dilemma- do I carry on with this novel which is planned out and has approx 55k to go or alternatively I have been flooded with ideas for another novel- but this one fantasy- which randomly came to me when I went shopping. Problem with novel Idea 2 is that lots of planning is needed and I don't have time, so I'm going to think on it and decide what I'm going to do. Any suggestions would be welcome.

A tale of two... buses?

I like to think of myself as quite an intelligent person, I passed the 11+ or Grammar School test as it's also known, I achieved good grades at GCSE and A Level and I have a 2:1 from the University of Gloucestershire in History and Sociology. Despite this I had a bit of a 'funny five minutes' this morning and as a result felt thicker than two short planks put together.

I had a Doctor's appointment at her clinic this morning, but due to car trouble - sore subject - I decided to catch the bus into cheltenham this morning. As I had a flat battery on the car (it keeps happening!!!!) I thought i'd get a gadget to sort it out myself when it breaks down instead of relying on my mum and dad, and my breakdown service, who now won't come out as it's the same problem. I plotted out my route's on the bus, one bus to town for dr's, one to halfords for gadget, then recatch same bus home and walk remainder of the way.

Before setting out I called my mum regarding arrangements for family dinner tonight, and following a chat thought I'd leave off getting the gadjet, which bus-wise would mean catching the same bus back as I caught going out.

I went to Doctors (back 2 work next week boooo!), and for some completely weird reason unbeknownst to me decided to stand at this random bus stop round the corner from the bus station- as i had convinced myself the bus went that way. I stood there for 5-10mins and a bus pulled up to drop someone off, I recognised the number and got on. The bus driver gave me a weird look and said that this was a dropping off point only, but he'd let me on (I had a pass) and then he drove round the block to the bus station where everyone except me got off and then all the new passengers got on.

The bus set off but it didn't turn off where it normally did, and then i realised what I had done. I'd got on the wrong bus the one that I'd thought about catching to Halfords but changed my mind about, and i had confused myself with the route numbers. I felt like a right idiot not only had I got on the bus in the wrong place but I was on the wrong bus in the first place! The bus does go near my house but there is a longer walk when you get off to my house, and the bus goes miles out of the way and takes longer. How thick was I?

On novelling...

Well that's another story entirely haha!

The First draft of chapter 11 was completed yesterday and chapter 12 is in the indepth planning stage, as it is a key chapter which plays an important role and goes on to set the tone for the rest of the novel. As I have said previously there will also be a death *enter stage right grim reaper*. I expect to write it either tomorrow or at the weekend due to time constraints which I hope won't affect my ability to blog.

All in all a very productive day!

I've actually had quite a good day today, as i have done not just one chapter but done a third of the next one too. I would have finished the second chapter, but im too tired to type anything further, and when i'm tired I find it difficult to write as i run out of ideas.

So what have i written? Well I sorted out chapters 8 and 9 which dealt with my MC's wedding and wedding night respectively - that was fun i can tell you- I've never written an 'x rated' scene before and as i wrote it i couldn't help but think that if it ever got published my mum, and both of my grandmother's would read it and i found that a bit cringeworthy, although i tried not to tone it down too much. One hint i've come across from somewhere was 'not to mention fluids' (if i find the link where i read that i'll post it) and so i didn't.

Chapter 10 was really nice to write as my MC and her new husband moved to there new home, and i wrote this really sweet bit about how she was so exhausted on arrival that he carried her to her bedroom, and would not allow the servants to do it, and then didn't attempt to seduce her and instead let her sleep. There was further x rated stuff the next day and a puppy and then by the end of chapter 10 she was 'up the duff' (unsurprisingly)



Chapter 11 is the birth of the child, and i was greatly inspired for the writing of this passage by the novel 'Innocent Traitor' by Alison Weir (who i am a bit of a fan of). She writes Tudor fiction and non fiction and I have two of her novels 'IT' and the Lady Elizabeth, but I also have her non-fiction book 'The lady in the tower' which is based on her research under Anne Boleyn. I absolutely love Tudor History and fiction - I studied the Tudors at degree level and loved every minute of it - however I am not writing Tudor fiction because the market is saturated with it due to leading Authors such as Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory who I also enjoy (despite the accuracies, outlandish theories and assumptions made in both- they are 'fiction' after all). I know there are plenty more out there but for me I love the Georgians particularly the clothing and the gowns like the Mantua (see above)and other wider court gowns (like that shown at the very top of this page).

I hope to finish chapter 11 tomorrow, and then i get to start work on the really dark and nitty gritty stuff (enter stage right: Grim Reaper), which is where my research on smallpox comes in. I can't wait!

I'm going to end with something funny today. I had a bit of a scare as i wrote this as i realised i had LOST 3000 words and chapter 11 had been saved as chapter 10 (I save under individual chapter names), I panicked, the real chapter 10 was nowhere to be found- all those hours of research and work wasted!!!! I went into recent documents and i saw that there were 2 chapter 10s and luckily I found the missing 3000 words saved in the wrong folder, but not before almost giving myself a heart attack. And if you thought that was funny see what you make of the picture below showing an 18th century lady in wide court dress over huge panniers so big she has to enter through a door sideways!

From Gobbledegook to prose: turning that crap into something wonderful

I was ill yesterday as you probably saw from my post, and i managed to write 3000 words of complete and total rubbish. I'm not sure how I did it, reading back i can see all the key things i wanted to be in the scene are all missing. The events are right but the ideas, thoughts and feelings i wanted to convey in the scene are not there. So i decided that rather than continue with the next chapter and edit at the end of the novel I would rip the chapter apart now and fix it. I could have waited but i just didn't feel right continuing until everything was put the way it should have been. I also thought i would be more difficult to continue with the following chapter until the previous one was corrected.

In my editing some of the chapter just went completely but on the other hand i also added a great deal. As it stands i am halfway through the chapter's editing and the word count has jumped up to 4000 words. Increasing the word count and knowing that i will be increasing it even further in the second half of the chapter has made me think about splitting my one chapter into two, however, I don't know whether it will be worth doing until i have finished tidying the second half of the chapter.

One of my favourite mistakes known as nanoism in the NANO world was my opening line for the chapter - we were married 6 months later in the spring. I then spent the next 2000 words describing how she was about to get married and the ceremony and the clothes and wedding night. What was the point in saying they were married and then going back and telling the story of the wedding. It didn't work and defeated the object of the first line. so i got rid of it and got a slightly better line which im much happier with.

I've still got a lot to do on this chapter and can hopefully fix the rest tonight but i have learnt a valuable lesson. Im glad i wrote yesterday because I proved I can write when im ill, unfortunately i cannot write anything coherent but I can work on that, and by spending time on the chapter when i was ill i still managed to churn the words out and create something that i could work with. I also learnt that i shouldn't be afraid to do major editing at the end of a chapter if something doesn't work it doesn't work and isn't it better to fix it when your in the mindset then come back and do some major changes when your not? Thats up for deliberation but if anyone wants to comment then please speak now or forever hold your peace...

(nb im sorry i've just written a whole chapter on marriage including the words of the ceremony itself and i couldn't resist.)

When one chapter becomes two

So i planned my novel first by doing a full synopsis and then did a chapter by chapter outline detailing what was going to happen in each chapter. In my original chapter outline I had approximately 23 chapters that was until a minor change in the plot at the beginning which resulted in chapters 3 and 4 being about something different so 2 more chapters were added. result 25 chapters. Then chap 5 also under went some alterations and needed another chapter so i was upto 26 chapters until i came to write chapter 6 did my detailed chapter outline and realised it was too long and too much happens so now i've split the events over two chapters and i'm upto 27 chapters.

I am happier with the novel being as it is now. in the scheme of things nothing major has changed, I just wanted to show more character development and had some better ideas. It does however mean i have more work to do and also the word count has gone up dramatically.

The first draft of chapter 6 done means chapter 7 is the next thing i have to do. Events in chapter 7 are slightly Austenish but then reading her novels this year have greatly inspired my own and allowed me to pick up a pen and write after suffering from writers block for longer than I care to remember. chapter 7 is going to be exciting with declarations of love, a proposal and the consequences of the proposal which truly set the novel in motion and its definitely going to be more fun than it was writing chapter 6 (I spent ages looking for an 18th century song which would have been in existence at the right time and was in English).

Anyway I'm knackered which is why this post probably reads a bit weird so im off to chat on the Nano forums and nibble poppadoms dipped in mango chutney Yum- don't judge me!

Lets start at the very beginning... A very good place to start

You're probably wondering what the above quote from the sound of music is doing here. Well I worked on my prologue yesterday, which of course comes write at the beginning - (ed. lol i meant right at the beginning). I had had a really good idea for it and had been looking forward to writing it but it turned out to be much more difficult than I expected.

So what was the problem? Well I knew where the MC was, I knew what she was doing and i knew what was going to happen to her. my problem was that my reader knew none of these things. they didn't know who she was, they don't even know her name at this point so why would anyone care about her? And if they didn't care why would anyone read on?

As usual once i got going I was ok and i came up with what i thought was quite a dramatic opening, well at least i think so. The prologue starts at the end of the story and something is about to happen to the character which is very unexpected, and something you would not normally find at the beginning of a story - the end.

What makes it all the more dramatic is the mc knows what is about to happen but the audience doesnt know and they don't find out until the last lines of the prologue.
My goal here was to shock my reader to make them want to read on to find out how the character got to this point in the first place. If it was a murder mystery it would be a why dunnit and how dunnit rather than a who dunnit. I wanted them to react to my writing with words to the effect of OMG!

So how did I do it?
I set my scene and did it as simply as possible not wishing to dwell too much on long descriptions. Long descriptions can come later in the novel for now the basics were enough as vagueness can also work in your favour allowing the reader more artistic licence and free to imagine what they wish based around the simple start you give them. After setting the scene I had the mc do an action- she walked down some stairs- again giving only a minimum description of the environment. The other reason for this is I don't want people to necessarily know at this point where my character is. I then had my MC reach her destination and sit down as requested now i was able to give some more detail but only on what my mc was thinking and i used her thoughts to open up the picture more and more until you realise what is going on.

It's a bit like doing a jigsaw in which you don't know what you're making, in that you gradually build up the picture piece by piece until it's finished and then you've got the full picture.

All writers do things differently and others may not agree with the way I have done my prologue and may have other ways of doing it, what do you think? I can post the prologue here if anyone would like to read it- if you'd like to see or comment on anything please feel free to use the below comments facility.

Spotlight on.... Opening lines

It's been four long days since my last post but what have i been upto? Well I have another chapter drafted and ready for editing, chapter 5 is complete and it was one of the most difficult chapters so far. Why was this you might ask? Well I knew what i wanted to write and I knew how i wanted to write it, but i just could not get going. My best chapters which flow straight from brain to fingers to laptop are the ones which have an excellent opening line. As long as I have a good opening line i have very few problems in writing as everything else just comes to me.

But how do you write a good opening line?

If i knew the answer to that question I don't think I would have had problems coming up with one. Most of the opening lines I have written for my chapters so far have varied depending on what's in the scene. The prologue (once written) will be a quote from the character on perceptions of truth, Chapter 1 sets the scene with an landscape description, chapter 2 depicts the change in time, chapter 3 is what my character can hear, chapter 4 is the weather and chapter 5 was my characters emotions.

So I have: Weather, landscape description, thoughts, feelings, and the senses, all forming the main basis of my opening lines.

From other novels I have read I have also come across opening lines which are quotes and dialogue. I do intend to do some dialogue opening scenes later but I find those type of openings dramatic and believe they should be used sparingly where they can be truly effective.

I have recently joined the NaNoWriMo community and am enjoying the conversations that take place in the forums. I expect these to really help inspire me not only with my novel but also with this blog for post ideas.

For those of my readers who are not familliar with NaNoWriMo, this is a novel writing challenge due to start on 1st November. The aim of the game is to write 50k words during the month of November. Now whilst it is true that i have already started my novel (5 chapters down another 20 or so to go), I am expecting it to be well over the 75k mark, and by setting myself the target of 50k for november that will really motivate me to get the novel hopefully finished by the end of november.

So wish me luck.... and for any of the NaNoWriMo Community who are reading this Good Luck to you too x

Are we all children at heart?

As my novel moves on from chapter to chapter my main protaganist and her brother are seen to be growing up and moving from childhood to adulthood. Shortly I will no longer need to write about them as children and instead write about them as adults. Unfortunately I have been unable to work on my novel. Todays excuse is that i have been busy doing chores and getting ready to go out tonight.

As i mentioned previously I am going to a cancer benefit evening being held in the form of a line dance which is being held in Bristol, which is forty five minutes away from where i currently live. This week i have talked about things I have bought such as the pair of earrings which were the topic of my blog post, "Are you an impulse buyer?" The theme for this evening is based around the colour pink and it is the same theme every year. What people wear varies mostly its jeans and a top or skirt and a top in usually pink or white (last year i wore a pink top and white trousers). This year i wanted to wear something different so i am wearing a pink prom dress i bought from the bhs sale in the summer.

Now i am ready to go out (we're leaving in an hour) I can see from my reflection that I look nice - or at least i think i do- although i know that i may look a bit overdressed, but i don't really care and part of me is overdressing for a particular reason. I want to be noticed, I want people to see me and look at me and I want the attention that it will inevitably result in. Why is this? Well I'm not pretty - and no this isn't a lack of confidence thing - and i make up for my lack of looks with my quirky and bubbly personality. I dressed up tonight so that i would shine, I am a very good dancer and i want people to watch and admire me (I'm not vain either).

To be honest though the main reason i dress up is because I like to dress up. I've enjoyed dressing up since a child when i used to dress up as a princess or a mermaid, and for me this is the next step to this and a further extension. Dressing up, doing my hair, putting on jewels (fake of course) and make up takes be back to when i was a child wrapping sheets around my waist and veils on my head pretending to be a princess. It's part of the reason I love history so much, even now i absolutely love costume history, particularly the eighteenth century such as the gown worn by the woman in my wallpaper behind this post (a painting by Gainsborough)and i can spend hours looking at the gowns in paintings - another favourite of mine is any picture of Madame Pompadour, check out images of her on the internet to see some examples.

To finish my blog post today I want to say that I think there is a child in all of us it can be seen when we play when we dress up when we laugh and it keeps us feeling young, at the end of the day a 'grownup is a child with layers on.' (Woody Harrelson).

Are you an impulse buyer?

No I'm not referring to the toiletries product range. I am talking about buying a product or service on the impulse or spur of the moment.

Today it was a handbag worth £16 in Claire's Accessories, I had gone in for a pair of pink and black earrings and wanted to see what they had as I needed them for a breast cancer charity line dance I am attending on saturday. I found the earrings they were £4 and exactly the kind of thing i was looking for, but whilst I was in there I saw a pink and black handbag. I checked the price £16- the higher end of my budget for handbags - and picked it up and walked to the till.

Whilst queuing I had a proper look at the bag, it was nice and but I found myself thinking, 'I don't need a bag and it's a lot of money', but then the other voice in my head said, 'but it will go so well with your pink and black dress you are wearing saturday.'

Still queing I argued the pros and cons, finally I decided I couldn't afford it and I had a black handbag which would do me just fine, and I felt so very proud of myself for putting back, but stilled gave into the impulse of some cheap pink nail varnish on the till point, and now home I feel a little guilty about it.

Shops are well aware of the impulses a customer have to buy things on the till, thats why most supermarkets have sweets, cd's, magazines and dvd's available on the till to buy. It's a clever marketing ploy, you don't normally have enough time to really think about your purchase you just 'do it' and before you know it your £20 shopping bill becomes £25 pounds. Sometimes you justify the purchase to yourself with excuses or if you're like me you just pay for the luxury separately on your credit card and feel guilty afterwards.

It's not just purchasing of products that can be done on an impulse, how many times have we said something or done something on the spur of the moment sometimes with a detrimental effect on someone else. We mean what we say, but we don't mean what we say, the way we say it.

I haven't worked on my novel today, I have been neglecting other things that needed doing so have been catching up on these, but it hasn't stopped me thinking today about it. I was wondering about my novel's protaganist Margaret and what sort of things she would do on an impulse or on the spur of the moment. I know that she will have to make some major decisions later on which may also be based on an impulse, she will consider doing things that aren't necessarily good and will be based on the voices in her head, but it is what you do with the voices in your head which count.

After all we are merely extensions of the voices in our heads.

Your destiny awaits...

I have good news today. That third chapter, the one I have been having such difficulty with is now finished to my satisfaction (pending further editing later). I have even picked out the actor who I would want to play one of the parts if I ever managed to get the book published, it became a success and was turned into a movie. Yes Rupert Friend (Albert in The Young Victoria) I am talking about you, consider yourself hired at some point in the next 10 years.

I don't know if I will ever finish the Novel let alone get it published, be successful, become a movie etc. but I am one of those people who believe that if its meant to be it will be. I believe that things do and don't happen for a reason but we don't always know why and sometimes we're not meant to find out why. I think that we all have a destiny at the end of our life's journey, there will be many paths to reach our destination and we may take a wrong turning, and get lost, get delayed but eventually we find our way back to the road or path and ultimately reach our destination usually learning valuable lessons on the way.

The main character in my novel, Margaret, has a destiny to fulfill. She will also go on a journey and make many choices on the way, some good and some bad. Things will happen which she won't understand the meaning of and will affect her and shape her character. I can't tell you her destiny, or what obstacles she will face, but i can tell you that she is a fighter and she will overcome them.

What about your destiny? Do you believe in Destiny or fate? Are things just coincidence or are they meant to be? Do you know what your destiny is? Should we worry about our destinies?

If you'd like to venture an opinion please feel free to do so in the comment section below.

A sight for sore eyes - is too much planning a bad thing?

I went to the hospital today to have some eye tests. Whilst I was sitting in the waiting room, waiting whilst everyone else was being called in, I used the rare time to myself to think about my novel. In my very first post I detailed my method of writing my chapters explaining that I do this first of all by hand and then type in to the computer correcting any errors and adding where necessary. My third chapter of the novel has proven to be my most challenging one to write so far and even now I am only half way.

I had previously planned chapter three in detail as to exactly what would happen, but I had the difficulty of not being able to 'get going' on it. Yesterday I managed to write only 483 words which was not like me at all. I was considering this whilst waiting for my appointment, why couldn't i get going and why was what i had written - to put it bluntly - so terrible.

So often we plan things in our lives, but even the most well laid plans sometimes do not work out, and a minor detail can result in our plan being thrown out altogether, despite all the work we may have put into it. You just have to look at the Titanic to get my drift. I think that sometimes planning can do more harm than good, as you can miss out the freedoms of creativity and not knowing where you are going can be half the adventure of getting there and not to mention the half the fun.

Do we also plan too much? Or should we just go with the flow? It can be good to have a routine or structure as it can help keep you focussed, but is too much focus a bad thing, and are we missing out on things because it is part of our routine to stick to our structure?

Returning from my own appointment I decided to go straight to my laptop and rather than opening my saved file of chapter 3 I opened a fresh page and began with a stronger sentence inspired by my time at the hospital this morning. I changed my plan, and the time period my novel was set (only by 20 years or so)and followed my heart instead of my head. Now I am feeling much happier and although I haven't yet finished chapter 3, by changing my planned way of doing things I am half way through the chapter and looking forward to finishing it rather than wanting to give up on it.

Personally, I believe that although, planning can be the writers best tool, it can also be the writers biggest obstacle, and unless the writer acknowledges that things don't always go to the plan then he or her will be constantly disappointed.

PS Comments are very much welcome :)

Here we go!!!

Day 1 Blog 1

I have finally typed up chapter 2 of my novel. It's been a work in progress for well over a week but finally i have 3000 black words on white paper. so thats a total of 6000 down 69,000 to go. I have also bought some books today of which Amanda Vickery is the author to help with my research into the time period of which my novel is set which is the 17th-18th centurys. These books are: 'The Gentleman's Daughter' and 'Behind Closed Doors' and they will make a welcome addition to my two existing books 'The English Marriage' and 'The prospect before her', can't remember the authors so will look up and post in my next post tomorrow.

Next up of course i have to think about chapter 3, its kind of in my head already, i know roughly what i want to happen so i just need to set about writing it. My personal system is to have all my notes on my pc, on onenote and i have a page of notes for each character as well as my synopsis and my chapter by chapter outline. I then write my first draft by hand in a notebook then type this up as a second draft adding and editing where necessary. The first handwritten draft is the most difficult which is why i do it by hand- i have no internet distractions then such as email, gaming, blah de blah blah blah...

Hopefully i can keep up this blog to keep myself motivated to write and one day (fingers crossed) get this published and so on and also deter from writers block.