Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Are You Ready to Write Your Novel?


It's almost that time again. National Novel Writing Month is a mere 16 days away.  

The gauntlet has been thrown down, and I've picked it up again. Every year the good folks at NaNoWriMo invite novelists and wannabe novelists all over the world to write that novel they've been ‘gonna write some day'.

Not only do they challenge you to write the novel, but write it now or at least 50,000 words of it within the 30 days of November.  I've never had a problem with writing the 50,000 word first draft - Whether any of them qualify as a 'Novel' is another question entirely.  I have a few in a drawer somewhere that I edited from time to time.  The best of the lot was my 2012 novel written in early 2001 or 02, which I procrastinated into obsolescence. Yep I was still editing and rewriting when 2012 didn't happen

Ever the optimist, I'm taking a few of my characters from that 2012 novel and my Murder
is a Primary Color novel from last year and involving them in a mystery.  I’m bringing a lot of the backstory forward as it informs the characters. 

I’ve got a working title (Witch on a Witch Hunt); designed a quick cover on PowerPoint; and I’m clipping pix from magazines for my storyboard for different characters, rooms, locations, etc.  I need pictures in my storyline. 

A shout out to Nathan Bransford's for Blog post on the One Sentence, One Paragraph... Pitch.  I managed to construct one of my own and here it is.

Here is my one-liner: A real bewitched teams up with a Sam Spade wannabe to solve a series of anomalous murders in the year 2025.