My Novel’s Progress Today, A Place to Pause for Now

Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022

(blushing night skies receive my kisses)

I consider what we may think others might expect from us and that we may be happier to surprise everyone naturally and pleasurably in writing or doing something, such as a novel, as you yourself find most interesting to write and read…

…I’ve started writing my 1st novel this November. I’ve rewritten the draft so far in third person and in the past tense. I am at exactly 3000 words. It’s a fantasy novel, likely for young adult readers (and anyone.)

I’d uncovered a document unplanned on my laptop I’d saved yrs ago in 2013 when I was thinking, I may like to write a novel. I didn’t even really think at all about how I was writing one then without coming upon the file. It was a file of ideas, a starting outline, and I’d never written a draft or had a defined theme.

I found it and found a few little details enthralling: I thought, I will keep writing whatever I like from this; I will delete whatever details feel like they are not ones I wish to work on or spend time within. When I started a draft this month, I kept just one character from that outline and renewed the idea with one possible theme.

Maybe I found myself unqualified, or that I had to start with realism as maybe seen as more expected from me and that others would find me qualified to write upon reading it, and then I returned fully to writing poetry.

Before I’d started, I thought, but this name doesn’t seem to fit my protagonist’s personality though. And then I realized I didn’t have to remove her name; the idea came… ‘…but who said I’m the protagonist?; maybe you got me the right name and the wrong role? ) As if the character had said so herself! It was a funny imaginative thought. 🙂

And this feels like the time when I am ready to work on it again to reread this very beginning, 8 printed pages and clarify certain things like inner desires, opposition or possible actual conflicts from conflicting characters’ desires, and: what the main character wants at the start of the story.

I’ve been thinking it may be good as a writer and for this story especially for me to think a little more widely or expansively this way with some personal details as I write from the narrator’s perspective who has a tone and a quirky, yet graceful style that fits the mood of the story. As mainly a lyrical poet at this point, this type of writing as a narrator is a little new for me, and it’s also something I find myself naturally drawn to for this particular story and as an artist right now.

Jade