Tuesday 1 November 2011

New experience

Well I've just been mighty brave. Or mightly foolish. Because I just signed up for a Novel writing Competition.

The November Write a Novel competition to be precise, run by the Office of Letters and Light Programs. The objective is to have written 50'000 words of a first draft Novel by 30th November.

Now before you say anything, no, I'm not going to just submit the novel I've already done. That would defeat the purpose and would be cheating. Instead, I'm writing a completely different novel but set more or less in the same universe. It will use the same history, races, politics etc but from a different angle. And seeing as its putting a bit of pressure on me I hope it will force me to be creative.

Which actually, it has already succeeded in. I've written just over 2000 words straight up, grabbing time during work and play, to type up stuff on my mini-laptop. This has put me slightly ahead of the game (as you have to write just over 1600 words a day to get the magic 50k by the 30th).

And this new novel is very different. Instead of concentrating on many characters, this one concentrates on only a few. Their is a bit less action, more drama. And hopefully as it progresses, a bit of investigative work too. That's the plan anyway.

And plan is a very board term and really I've started this completely from scratch. Instead of years of planning, this one just kicked off with a weak idea and I let the main character just do their thing.

We'll see how it progresses. Might even prompt me to update this blog more!

And meantime, I haven't forgotten the main Novel. 237 pages now. As I write this new novel, the old one gets updated as well (easy enough to have two word documents open at the same time afterall) and with pressure put on me due to the new novel I find little ideas appearing for the old one as well. Which I gleefully note down.

It is going well. A good start. Hopefully, with time invested, this will continue.
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