It starts with an idea. Everything does, doesn’t it? Be it a song or a movie or a book or even something someone did or said. It only takes a moment to spark it.
For myself, I’ve learned over the years that in order for the idea to become more than that is to let it sit in my mind for a while. Not all ideas are good ones. Not all ideas are going to be novels or even short stories. Not all ideas have to be one entity. You can have many ideas that can become one big one. An anthill into a mountain.
My anthill began with an idea of attempting a split POV (point of view novel). I wanted a female and a male lead and I wanted bad, bad things to happen to them.
Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy-F. Scott Fitzgerald
The idea marinated a bit. I took a break from writing to play a new video game. I play
RPG’s like it’s nobody’s business, by the way. Anyhow, this particular game highlighted the essence of friendship in a time of complete and utter tragedy. The emotion it gave me, I wanted others to feel. So, I began a tragedy.
Let me start off by saying that I am a pantser when it comes to writing. I do not outline. All I do is plan the idea in my head, as I stated earlier, and then i sit down and I write. Most of the time I know how the story is going to end. The middle just comes along naturally.
Most of my novels begin with a song. This one didn’t have a song, just an idea. The second I heard “the one” the writing became quicker and more fluid. The stories of my two protagonists came quickly, with a few changes here and there. I knew I didn’t want to write another princess novel. This one was going to be regular people in awful situations, learning to find the strength to go on.
This wasn’t my first novel. In fact, it was my seventh. When you’re writing as long as I have, you find your knack. In other words, you discover what works for you in terms of how you write, when you write and how you edit. This includes, daily word count, drafts, time allotted etc.
The first draft was completed in just under five weeks at 74k words.
Stay tuned for more.
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