Friday, October 14, 2011

Chapter 4 Finished! Now a New Idea...

Chapter 4 is finally finished and posted. See the sidebar if you still have any interest in my snail’s progress through antiquity to the shores of America, and the backwoods of RI where fact and fiction meld in a tandem drift, moment to moment, day to day, month to month, memory to make-believe.

I have had a new idea, thanks to Niamh Boyce, a writer who blogs at Words A Day. She wrote a piece about her intent to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It is a challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the month of November. I was so excited … what a wonderful plan for procrastinators like me! The caveat to which you are asked to agree, however, is that you must start a novel from scratch at the beginning of the month, although outlines are OK. Hmmm…a problem.

Well, maybe not. I have learned in my side trips into the world of poetry that sometimes poems are made better by deleting even favorite lines…nothing should be sacred. So, what if I start a novel from the juncture I have reached at the end of Chapter 4 of Written In Stone, a working title I had already intended to change anyway. I have been feeling that I am patiently filling in background details to get to the real story. Rationalization perhaps, but I’ll give it some more thought and decide if I want to accept this new challenge of frantic writing every day, at least 1,667 words each day, or five to six pages (double/triple that if you have a life on the side, need to feed people, do the laundry and so forth.) I have two weeks to decide for sure.

Here is the link to the NaNoWriMo website. I have already optimistically established my account! Leave a comment here if you decide to try it yourself.