I'm currently looking for a home for my 2007 novel, Earth's Gate. You might ask if it's really worth it to write so recklessly if it's going to take three long years to clean up the mess. The answer is YES. The beautiful manuscript wouldn't even exist without Nanowrimo, even if it looks nothing like the original. It's kind of like a baby in that way.
In 2008, I wrote the sequel to Earth's Gate. Well, not the whole sequel, just the love story part. I fell in love with a brand new character who didn't even exist in Earth's Gate, and he took over the whole story. In Earth's Gate, Jenny falls in love with Arram. In the 2008 sequel I forgot to mention them. It was all about Drew. It was a problem of such epic proportions that I squirreled the whole story away and waited til the opportune moment to dig it back out.
Now Karen, I ask you--is May 2010 really the opportune moment? We're trying to get our house ready to put on the market, it's the last month my youngest son will ever be in preschool, and therefore home during most of the day with his mom and I started a blog last week. Oh yeah--and everyone knows a writer should never write the sequel before she's even sold the first one.
But apparently it is the opportune moment. Karen challenged me to write a book before summer vacation started. I've had several ideas swimming around in my head for novels, but this is the one I feel passionate about. My goal is to write a one sentence summary of each of the chapters, just so I can make sure I have a real story arc. This time my main character will be a real main character. That's not the point of Nanowrimo though. Cohesive story lines are just a lucky bonus. The word count is what matters. So in addition to creating a real story arc, my goal is to write 5000 words a week, and share the process on my blog. It wouldn't win at Nanowrimo, but not even I am crazy enough to try that twice in a year.
Um, why are you putting your house on the market? Please tell me it's because you are moving back to Utah. :)
ReplyDeleteWouldn't that be cool? I put off selling this house for a long time in the hope that my husband would suddenly realize that he wanted to move back to Utah, but I finally realized that he loves his job, and it ain't gonna happen. We want to live closer to a ward house--anything we do with church at the moment requires a 30 minute drive in both directions. After a decade, we're really getting sick of that.
ReplyDeleteEep, sorry? And you're welcome? Because in that bizarre way we encourage each other and help each other reach goals we didn't know we needed to set and all that fun stuff, right? Love it! Just under four weeks left...
ReplyDeleteKaren! I was trying to say thank you. Because if I waited for the perfect time to write a book, I'd never write another one. Writing is work! And it's just about impossible to do with children in the house.
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