Written In Stone is a working title for the novel I have been writing since 2008. Although I have done a great deal of expository writing in the past, making a case for one thing or another, poetry and fiction are a new adventure .
I have completed a prologue and three chapters of the novel. I started the fourth, but life stepped in --- full stop --- and I stalled. I briefly harbored the hope of publishing the novel until a bit of research into the industry clearly showed that to be a flight of fancy higher and farther than any I might board. So I see it off into cyberspace from this platform like Dorothy's ride to Oz or Alice's tumble into the rabbit hole. Perhaps I believe the guilt of seeing my offspring out there alone will fuel my imagination, jumpstart my pen, and carry me on wings to the last word.
Serial novels were a nineteenth century publishing phenomenon. Authors the likes of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Mark Twain submitted periodic chapters to Harper's Magazine among others. There is apparently a current buzz about reviving the practice within the context of our heavenly/ hellish internet. Stephen King has published an online serial novel and you can find others simply by searching "serial novels online". As with just about everything these days its acceptable to toss the rule book out the window ---
I might include notes like this on my struggles along the way, I'll see. I'd like to say I'll post a chapter each month; that will be my goal. Chime in if you are writing and would like to share your own thoughts about the process, yet I expect to be talking to myself here --- to which I have grown comfortably accustomed.
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Hello Ann ... thank you for your comments upon my poem "the Other Woman." I came to your blog to read and then found a need to come to the beginning of it. Ah yes, girls school. Has a lot to do with our formation does it not? Looking at publishing can be very daunting. I have been writing poetry off and on my whole life. I have never considered myself a writer until now. I have some poems for which I wish to pursue publishing. And then, I have this book swirling around in my head. Better said, I have two of Mummy's scrapbooks kept during her years in London working for the OWI (US Gov.) during WWII. I find them to be a treasure and have a need to see something done with them in the form os a book. I am just not sure "what" it should be.
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