A Novel Idea

Sept 2009:  6,800 words, 27 pages

Jan  2012:  10,131 words, 42 pages

Feb 2012:  0

Mar 2012:  0

Apr 2012:  13,513 words, 53 pages

May 2012: 19,282 words, 80 pages

June 2012:  23,056 words, 95 pages

July 2012:  29,517 words, 123 pages

Aug 2012:  35,058 words, 146 pages

I started this in 2009, put it down and didn't look at it again for three whole years.  I never even said it out loud to anyone that writing a book was something I wanted to do until this year even though it's been floating around in the back of my mind for a really long time. I mean, you can't just casually say, "Oh, yeah I want to write a book."  It seems so impossible.

Who am I to think I am actually capable of such a thing?

I love to read and to write. I used to sign up for Summer reading programs at the library when I was a kid. I've been writing in journals since I was 9.  I used to write stories and enter writing contests in elementary school. I've always loved writing, but I have no clue if I'm any good at it. If I'd been true to my heart in college I probably would have majored in creative writing or journalism or anything to do with writing.  In retrospect I wish I had. Sociology may have seemed more practical at the time but I've never even come close to working in that field so I could have gotten a degree in anything based on where I'm at now.

Writing a book has always been a dream of mine, but I put it off for so long because I was afraid. I didn't know where to begin and I was afraid of finding out that I wasn't capable of it. Eventually, I put some words on paper in 2009 and got a nice start. Then I got stumped. Then life happened. I was too busy with house hunting, wedding planning and post wedded bliss. There was always some excuse.

Sneak Peak

Every  now and then I'd get this burning desire to write a book and instead of ignoring it this year I dusted off the old manuscript and got to working on it again. It's going to be Fiction.  I had to re read everything and figure out where I was and then where I wanted to go, but once I got started again I wrote 20 pages in one day making me think....okay maybe I can do this. I need to get to about 60,000-80,000 words which is about 225 pages for it to be novel length, so I made it one of my new year's resolutions to write 15 pages per month. I'm a little bit behind. I skipped Feb and March altogether because I was taking a few college classes, and I'll be gone for half of next month so I'm not sure how I'll do then. I'm okay with that as long as I do my best to write every month.

Sometimes I hit a wall.  I don't know what I want my characters to do, or it feels boring and don't know what to do to liven things up. When that happens I get a little discouraged, and put it aside but at some point I force myself to pull it out and keep writing. Write something. Anything. I keep telling myself that if I just make myself keep going, eventually the story will unfold. I keep notes about the characters and a timeline of events as I go so I can keep track of what's going on. With every page I write, I gain more confidence in myself that I might actually be able to finish it. 

Even now that I've decided I'm doing this the words "my book" still feel very strange coming out of my mouth.  It's something that a lot of people say they want to do, but only a handful ever actually do it. I really want to be one of the ones that do. I'm not even worried about whether or not I would get it published or not.  I just want to be able to say that it was something big I wanted to do and that I did it.