Writing a novel – a writer’s journal part 16: progress report
I had a fantastic day of writing today.
I actually completely finished a whole chapter. Chapter 12 of my novel for children is now finished and it leaves the reader dangling ready to turn the page to the next chapter. I have been trying hard to finish each chapter on an exciting high like this, enticing the reader to keep turning the pages.
Stopping at a high point of drama like this also helps me as a writer. I’ve planned what happens next already. The scene is not yet complete and so I have the perfect launching point for tomorrow’s writing session.
I have set myself the goal of 600 words per day over the last month. This goal will remain in place for the rest of September too. Over the last four day, however, I’ve managed to achieve just shy of 4000 words, 1990 of them today, my most productive writing day in a long time. I’ve not only passed the half way mark of 20,000 words, I leapt over the 22,000 word marks as well. The feeling is great.
An even greater feeling is that the story and the characters are really taking over. The momentum has been building now for several weeks. The plot is now an unstoppable vehicle heading for the climax.
Good writing.
Writing a novel – a writer’s journal part 12 – momentum
Writing when the words flow
I just love it when the words flow quickly. There is a real delight in creating a new story and there is little struggle to get the words up there on the computer screen (or in my notebook when I am writing poetry-I rarely compose poetry on the screen).
During the last two months I’ve been through some testing times regarding my children’s novel. At first I was distracted by the requirements to finish my course work for my Master of Arts degree. That’s out of the way now thankfully. Now I can fully focus on the novel-or so I thought.
Well, that’s when life took a nasty turn. I landed up in hospital, a few days later my wife also spent time in hospital and then I was bedridden for nine days with influenza. Many weeks later I am still feeling the after effects of that. It is only in the last week that I’ve got back on track with the novel.
One of the interesting things about writing is that the more you do the quicker you get at it. If I try to do a half hour here and an hour there I lose momentum and I seem not to make much progress. When I stick at it for two or three hours every day over a week it creates its own momentum. The story often takes over and I go along for an exhilarating ride with the characters and the plot. Many times I find that when the momentum is there the story almost writes itself. That’s how I’ve felt in recent days and I get this tingly feeling and can’t wait to get back to the writing. I want to know what is going to happen next! (Sure-I do have an overall plan of the plot; it’s the nitty-gritty of each scene that needs to be written.)
An interesting by-product of this method of writing is that the creative momentum frequently develops new ideas from the subconscious mind. When the creative mind is active the subconscious mind is still at work in the background, thinking up character developments and unexpected twists in the plot. This all goes to enhance the story.
I firmly believe that if a story grabs you like this-that you as the writer can’t wait to see what happens next-then your readers will want to also keep turning the pages.
Good writing
Writing while in hospital
It has been a while since my last post here on this blog.
During the last month I have been busy finishing off my course work for my Master of Arts in Creative Writing . It has distracted me from blogging for quite a few weeks. Then I had a few days in hospital – kidney stones are no fun. This was followed almost immediately by a stay in hospital by my wife. She had a blood clot in her leg which also was far from fun. You could say we were helping to keep the local medical staff gainfully employed. We are both on the mend now.
During my enforced stay in bed I managed to do quite a few hours of reading – all the in line of background research for my thesis novel. The reading was accomplished despite the fog created by the morphine to quell the waves of pain. Okay – I’ll come clean. I actually had to put the book down quite a few times and take frequent naps.
As I was reading, something triggered an interesting response in my foggy brain. I suddenly had an idea for the text of a picture book based on an experience our family had with a Koala many years ago. The story came to me in a flash – start to finish. That is quite amazing as the ideas I have often take many days – and sometimes weeks or even years – to find that satisfying ending.
Fortunately I had asked my wife to bring me my writing notebook to the hospital. Over the next few hours I jotted down the text of the picture book. Mind you, this is only a very rough first draft. It will probably need to go through many more drafts and rewriting before it is ready to send off to a publisher. Coming up with a unique idea is sometimes the hardest part of writing picture books. This was easy. The hard part will be in refining the text to a publishable standard.
Good writing.