Borough, South London
I started a novel today. Yup, 2,700 words of a draft, unproofed Chapter 2 are in the bag. If I manage another 47,300 I'll be in proper novel territory. At this rate I'll be there within a month.
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But I'm not happy.
.But I'm not happy.
Largely because I haven't come up with a plot for it. Tomorrow's writing session sure is going to be fun.
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The problem is, after months of dithering, I still haven't come up with a plot I like. There are many things I want to write about but I still don't know how to wrap them up.
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So, there I was mid-afternoon, after spending hours pacing up and down and drinking far too much coffee thinking 'Hey, I'll start writing anyway. Something is better than nothing'.
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So I did. The framework of the novel is pretty thin at the moment and opens with the premise that someone, coincidentally called Stef, wakes up to the eventual realisation that a year of his life has passed overnight. Only he has noticed. Hopefully, inspiration will come to me over the next few days as our intrepid hero struggles to find out what is going on and and answer the question 'does it really matter that he's 'lost' a year of his life?'. Has something strangely supernatural taken place? Or did the trauma of straining to come up with an original and interesting novel plot fry his brain somehow?
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This isn't my best idea for a novel but I was reluctant to make a hash of a theme I am more passionate about. The game plan is that my first attempt at writing a novel will invariably be pants, as I lack the experience, but I'll only get that experience by actually writing something. My problem with that is how do I sustain commitment to finishing a product I'm not happy with?
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Time will tell.
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Tomorrow is going to be hard.
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All things considered I'd rather be blogging. Fiction isn't my natural form of expression but it's just about the only medium available for communicating feelings and observations of life and stuff. I have to work at getting OK at this before the cash runs out and I'm forced to return to the 21st Century world of synthetic 'work' and the brain death that comes with it.
4 comments:
What do you plan to write about?
Have updated this post a little - the basic intention at this early stage is start off by having a character lose a year of his life but with nobody around him having noticed. The rather obvious moral of the tale being the question 'do we live our lives, year to year, in a way that makes any real difference or positive impact to ourselves and those around us?'. On the way, I'll probably take a few shots at some of the absurdities in the world around us.
That will get me into the first few chapters. After that, I'm not sure yet
Read Chapter 2 - don't think you should name the characters Stef and Tracey, if this really does develop into a novel, Stef and Tracey might develop lives of their own and it could get confusing in your house.
But I do like the idea, it has potential - I would turn it into something SF (but that's just me). Someone once told me that it's better to write something every day, even if it is total crap, rather then not write at all.
So write every day and your idea might develop and turn into a full novel OR you'll come up with something better along the way (and if you do, you can always turn this into a short story).
I hope this helps, if not, just ignore it.
No, it helps
Will probably do a search and replace on the names at some point this week
Am working on today's total crap right now ;-)
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