Journey Of A Novel

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1st Draft

A cohesive tale of players

Tanya V 1 August 2021

The character that I have introduced into the story in chapter seven is like none my protagonist has ever met before. This character is legendary, mysterious, formidable; they leave an impression on all who they meet. Few have ever met this character in the land that I am writing, but they have heard of, or know stories about their exploits in the world. For these reasons and more I need to write the character into the story beyond simply being relative to the narrative playing out for the protagonist. This character deserves to be more than a reference point to carry the weight of who they are beyond the chapter and into the time when the story is alive.

Over the years I have written background scenarios and some origin stories about the players in the tale that I am telling, I’d considered using these before but poo pooed the idea. That idea has been reignited with this new perspective that is emerging with the body of work and the development of my creative process along with it.

Once I realised this addition was beneficial to the story as a whole I began to reflect on all of the back story writing that I have done on the other main players that transit the protagonist through the major story points, and how I have included some of who they are in the chapters that I have written.

The mark that these interactions make on the protagonist are significant. They are more than background players that are happen-chanced upon, they are the story as much as the setting making their mark on the protagonist enough to influence in the moment and into the protagonist’s future. Without these characters the protagonist would have no emotional or spiritual landscape to navigate – we all need people to know who we are, personal evolution doesn’t happen by staring into a mirror.

With this in mind I came to realise that knowing these characters beyond their experiences with the protagonist creates a richer world and more complete story. It will work better to edit in these characters before or as they appear in the tale with some of each chapter dedicated to them. When writing this in I want to make the format rhythmic with regular intervals of introducing the next influential player as the chapters and narrative unfold.

This feels like a good decision. The right decision for a cohesive tale of players that shape the world and life of the protagonist and many others who live in the world that I am writing.

Unknown Territory

Tanya V 21 July 2021

Back on track and into it with a good rhythm and pace – I have finished chapter six. In chapter six I had planned to fit more of my plot in than I managed to so I may write an extra chapter into my original nine chapter plan. With the additions to chapter five along with the extra not in chapter six it might add up to two more chapters making eleven in total. The finer details of this are not important as I press on to finish. Part of the new progress that I have made is letting go of what I think should be happening and when according to what I had planned. My approach to the story has relaxed now as I am writing more and more into unknown territory. Acknowledging this helps with progress, I’m not as concerned about getting this or that part ‘right’ or ‘correct’ according to some plan that I thought that I needed to get work done.

It’s all been stripped back to get it out and get it done. Working in this way I’ve begun to make notes in my writing by highlighting sections to revisit and expand. Also I’ve put points at the beginning of the chapter files to refer to regarding themes, imagery and any other parts to remember.

How the story unfolds and ends is a mystery to me because I haven’t written it yet. With this in mind I want to get the action down and tidy up, polish and rewrite or expand where needed when I have a completed body of work.

Next is chapter seven. Another new character is introduced within this chapter that is pivotal to the protagonists development along with a new scenario that the protagonist has never encountered before. Finally in chapter the protagonist can stop running away from problems, take stock, look at how others live their lives and make choices about who and what they want to be. There will be challenges and adventures of a new kind with the discovery of personal power being the driving theme for this section. What decisions are your own? Why do you think certain things and in certain ways? How does another person’s way of being fit when we try it on for size? These are some of the questions that I want to toy with as subtext, I’ll see how I go.

Eye-roll, sigh, swear at the computer, repeat

Tanya V 20 July 2021

My Pollyanna gene is failing to have an affect on the rest of my physiology. Usually it over-rides or at least ambushes any Cassandra-esque tendencies, but not this week. I have fallen off the writing wagon with a spectacular crash. There’s been bumps and dips in the road caused by outside forces. The biggest roadblock has been technology – my computer keeps freezing and I lose the flow, then I get side-tracked searching for a solution that eats up my writing time. MS word has become obsolete demanding payment, which was bound to happen, but before I fully grasped this I tried to make it all work. Poor Billy G must need some extra change to pay for his divorce, I’m sure he can sort it out without my funds. Thankfully I’ve come to realise that Libre office is a writer’s best friend.

I’ve also had hard drive issues and internet connection problems and I’m sure that I’m not the only one to have these hiccups and the twitching eye that comes along with it all. None of these issues are life threatening or earth shattering but they have relentlessly and repeatedly followed on from one another seemingly working together with tag team precision. It’s been frustrating to say the least.

The past week or so has taught me a lot at the expense of my writing time including how to better recognise time wasting for the sake of an outcome that’s just not going to happen, and that hissing at the computer doesn’t make it work but does make me feel a little better.

Yes I know that I can walk away from the computer and write in a notebook, and I did, but I still have to type it up eventually. Even with this as a solution personally I prefer the cut and paste on the fly technique that’s available to me when using a computer for writing.

One good thing (hello, perhaps my Pollyanna gene is in tact), I thought for nearly a week that I was up to chapter five when I am up to chapter six and over half way done with writing it.

All the stops and starts and unfulfilled writing scheduling has left me very keen to get into it and claim my writing time back. I want to sit and write and only think about my writing and get lost in the world of my imagination. I’m used to distractions being of my own making so it has been a rude shock to have them come from elsewhere and a valuable lesson in wasting precious time when I could be writing.

Herding cats

Tanya V 5 July 2021

Writing chapter six first draft feels like baby steps as I inch through the storyline toward the chapter completion. Each baby step is monumental though, each step is a new action, another happening, a story point that pushes the action forward. I have written parts for this chapter in the past, but they are rough sketches of the action that I’m fleshing out as I go by combining what I have already written with new writing.

The slow pace feels tedious but at the same time writing in the new parts is fun. Characters are unfolding in ways that I hadn’t planned with the birth of new personalities in the midst of the narrative. Along with the characters and the action the protagonist is also changing and growing through points of reflection. To integrate this I’ve covered ground in the story having the protagonist journey through the landscape as they journey into themselves. The writing of these parts took some time with the combining of these two events into one.

As I develop the novel moving through each chapter in turn, I’m finding that I have a clearer picture of not just who and where but when I’m writing about. The time period is coming to life in my mind and I hope also on the page. In writing about a past time my aim isn’t to be accurate but more so representative. My focus is on fiction and story, not historical accuracy, also the period that I’m writing about is ancient history so the information available is often sketchy or absent.

There are some things that I can’t plan, to plan to that extent would make the work feel contrived with no space for things to evolve as they should. With this in mind I’ve resigned myself to the slow pace of chapter six for now. The bottom line is that I’m getting a lot done with new nuances to the story and characters coming from the inconsistent pace.

With past chapters I’ve had some seemingly channelled through the keyboard with record speed, or others that were slow in the writing through and through. This chapter has been different in that I have a very stop-start, sit and think, rewrite, tidy, then do it all again kind of flow going – if that can be called a flow.

The stop and start feel to the whole exercise is difficult to navigate. I keep finding a reason to start later rather than sooner, then stop. Distractions stop me. Really unimportant distractions like: I need a snack, I’ll just check my email, the rubbish needs taking out, I’ll watch that video for research, make a phone call, do the dishes, the list goes on. It’s like herding cats when you are both the cat herder and the cat.

One day at a time

Tanya V 28 June 2021

Chapter six is coming along nicely with the story shedding the extra story points that don’t serve it. When planning the chapters I had added points that I thought needed to be there to make sense of the world that I’m creating but in the writing of it they are overkill. I did the planning before I wrote my protagonist into the story and before I began writing regularly. The bits and pieces that I wrote before only glimpsed at who my protagonist has revealed themselves to be. With this the story has become a bit player rather than the star, the story is settling in with the rest of the piece as I progress.

While writing chapter six I kept dwelling on chapter five. It was really bugging me because I knew that I hadn’t included at least two crucial parts of the story that will be relevant in later chapters, and to the climax of the novel. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why these two unwritten parts are important and how to best use them. Listening to music has helped, especially music with lyrics because it speaks to what’s on my mind and inspires my thinking with a fresh perspective. So, with a new take on my self-made story development dilemma, I had a few aha moments that have helped to shape how I will integrate these two parts of chapter five. I want to have fun with them, so I’ll double back after the first draft of chapter six is completed to clean up chapter five with additions. Also, it made sense to move the end of chapter five and make it the beginning of chapter six; it reads better.

Writing regularly has fallen by the wayside in my routine over the past couple of months. I’m not happy about this. The problem is that I’m juggling so many things and it’s easier to not write at times because I feel overwhelmed by all the stuff that I have to do. I’m not complaining, just being real. To address this, I spent time making a six day breakdown of all the stuff that I have and want to do. The days are numbered, I haven’t assigned particular days at this point. I’ve grouped tasks together so that my brain doesn’t feel stretched trying to process all the things that I’ve scheduled myself, now I only have to process one day at a time.

Another 1000

Tanya V 23 June 2021

I’m inching my way through chapter six’s first draft with a lot of new writing. I have over 6000 words written for this chapter already from past writing workshops and prompts but I’m not feeling this chapter the same way as when I wrote in the past. The bones of the story haven’t changed, I’ve added a character to create some depth to the action and I’m messing with the sequence of events a bit from what I originally planned. The way that it’s coming along I think that I will be able to integrate some of what I think needs to be added to chapter five. I’ve put chapter five on the back burner, but it keeps coming to mind with thoughts about if I should expand it to be two chapters making it chapters five and six and taking my proposed chapter total to ten chapters rather than the original nine chapters. These thoughts about chapter five haven’t stood in the way of me progressing they have actually enhanced the writing of chapter six with more consideration about theme and imagery and prompted me to write notes for previous chapters to work in when I go back to do second drafts.

The further into the story I get the more I realise what I couldn’t have known when I was starting out. The saying ‘a story writes itself’ is making more and more sense to me as I progress.

I’ve written another 1000 words for chapter six in the past week. I would prefer to have finished the chapter, but it is what it is and this chapter seems to require more reflection as I tip toe into the writing of it. When the words weren’t flowing onto the page, I resorted to writing a list of story points for the chapter to get the events that I wanted to happen solid in my mind. Rather than staring at a blank page, or the blank part of the page, I now have a narrative ’to-do’ list that stares back at me. The list has really helped as this chapter has my protagonist moving from one location to another in a way that isn’t planned so it felt disjointed in my mind and I kept getting lost as to where I was up to. The list in this case has provided a reference point rather than having to repeatedly wrap my mind around where I’m at.

I expect that for the rest of the chapter I’ll use some past writing of the 6000 words or so I’ve previously written along with some new work which will make up the end of chapter six. I also suspect though that I will have enough space in my wordcount before it caps at 5000 words to go back to the start of the chapter and write in some of what was unwritten in chapter five. This might work, it might not, I’ll have to see.

In the flow

Tanya V 19 June 2021

For chapter six I’ve written just over 800 words that I’m really happy with. It only took about an hour or so of writing to get them out and get them down, but it took nearly two weeks of thinking about it before that. Also, before I began to write I added to notes for the chapter development, revisited the chapter notes to the previous chapter and began a new file to charter the theme, imagery, and character development of the protagonist throughout all chapters. All that along with the angst that accompanies bouts of not writing, the guilt that underpins it and the self-involved dramatization of sense of purpose. My mind has been busy even if my hands haven’t been busy banging out the words on my keyboard.

Introspection has been a necessary evil to keep my headspace aligned with the protagonist as they too have been traversing their sense of self and coming to terms with their progress through life. My navel-gazing then has been of value in this respect. At the top of my list for honouring my process and progress is to mindfully observe myself, where I’m at and how I can integrate my human experience best into my creative experience.

With all of that in mind I sat myself down today and wrote. My approach was ‘don’t leave the room’ aka Limitless style. I found it hard to get started which is why I wrote notes. I’d been thinking about the notes I added for the past couple of weeks, so it was good to get them down and make space in my head for other words and ideas. Once I had the notes in order I had a clear picture in mind of where I am up too in the story and wanted to get writing.

I wrote about 300 words and stared disappointedly at the word count as I was certain that was all that I had in me. One good thing about that thought though is that I am often wrong so it became easy to ignore. I read over my 300 words and added more that needed to be there. The word count grew with the image of the scene in my mind, each word I wrote contributed to the clarity of my vision as the scene came into focus. The other side of the 300 words flowed out of me as I more than doubled the wordcount to write the opening of the first draft of chapter six.

Achieving the improbable

Tanya V 8 June 2021

At just under 5000 words I’ve finished my first draft of chapter five. It was a doozy. It had me nearly whipped a few times, but I nailed it, I’m done, it’s in the can. For now anyway. Chapter five is my problem child, or chapter as the case may be. It will need more attention than the other chapters I’ve finished the first draft for so far. Chapter five raises the stacks for my protagonist taking the narrative in a new direction, and for the first time in the story a direction with no destination in mind for the protagonist. That makes chapter five more than a turning point but a marker for development of person and tale being told. This chapter holds story elements that many will be familiar with so I want to honour what the many and varied may identify with within it while also taking the ideals within and discarding them in favour of simple storytelling about a person trying to find their place in the world.

The origin story that I have based the story on is an epic tale but I’ve reassigned the big happenings to short time spans giving it what I hope is a whimsical and fantastical feel. I’ll have to see how it reads when done in full and until then keep pushing forwards.

Along with chapter five needing future attention chapter one will also need to be reworked. I don’t plan to change a lot but will revisit it when done with a view to honouring who the protagonist becomes with further insights to where they came from. When writing chapter one I was aware that I was beginning a story about a character that I didn’t understand fully and cannot until I am done writing the whole novel, for this reason I’m expecting to add, change or edit out some of the first draft of chapter one. I have to push through to the end to complete chapter one last.

Next is chapter six with the protagonist out in the world again forging through life and circumstance. I have some writing toward chapter six that I have written over the years but it’s sketchy at best with an indefinite storyline. I’ll have to do some thinking on the working parts to select the best narrative devices to drive the story into the next part. Chapter six is a pathway into the beyond for my protagonist, I’ll do my best create a gateway to a new world that will do their story justice.

Draining the swamp

Tanya V 7 June 2021

I’ve waded through the soggy marshland of pretty words from times past to copy, paste and delete another 1000 or so. The word count is nearing 3000 words that are keepers for the first draft of chapter five with the backlog that I’m squelching through whittled down to 12500 words. At times I’m overwhelmed by the excess that I’ve written over the years and the task that this has created in the present. Words have bogged me down and I’m swamped, but enough with that metaphor…

As I work through the characters are transforming from who I thought they were with revealing glimpses at who they may become as the story unfolds. I’ve found heartache and hidden motivations; I’ve stumbled into broken dreams and disillusions; it’s been very revealing. The words that I’d originally crafted into fragments of narrative came together to reveal a different story that has left me curious about my characters. They are a fragile bunch who are all wrapped up in their own perceptions, wanting to be heard, wanting to be loved, wanting to be happy.

Even though the setting touches on fantasy I can’t make it so fantastical that they can all have their needs met so heartache will prevail for most, perhaps for all – if so, that will almost make it a biography.

The largest parts that I have been cutting are bravado, that is the writing about the character’s public faces and acts towards others. Removing the outside perspective is bringing me closer to my characters where I can better observe them. The parts that I’ve kept show the soft underbelly of the characters, who they are and how they came to be the way that they are. Motivation is key after all, well for me anyway, I need to understand why people do the things that they do to best capture the small things that mean so much.

My intention of writing this story was to show one person’s story but I find that I cannot write about one person without including the stories of all involved. To write it any other way would to be to surround my protagonist with two dimensional characters who would ultimately belittle the protagonist’s struggle; all people struggle in life.

Previously I had worried about creating the right setting and authentically capturing the landscape but increasingly I’m coming to realise that the story itself is the landscape and that the characters create the setting.

Beyond words

Tanya V 18 May 2021

The jumble of words that I had written over the past few years had confused me enough to need a timeout. Time to reflect, time to reassess, time to understand what I was trying to achieve with the parts of chapter five that I had written with large gaps in between each writing session. The gaps in time are very obvious with a different feel to each piece. How to best use what I had and decipher something coherent was very challenging and I didn’t know how to get started.

Then I had an epiphany. I went to one of my storytelling happy places, a place beyond words, beyond characters, beyond setting and out of structure. A place that I enthusiastically discuss with any who will geek out with me about a book read or film watched, or even a painting. Symbolism! Words are secondary to what we can convey without them. It took me a while to shake off the cycling over of ideas and words that I had written down to go beyond to what it’s all about.

I’ve embraced the polarities of light and dark to ease into chapter five and it has worked, I’ve managed to let go of my angst over details and settle into the bigger picture. The symbolism that I am exploring and including is more than just light and dark, but I need to keep it simple to work through the dizzying cloud of words that have clogged up my vision. The other symbolic elements that I want to work in will come as I write through the highlights and shadows.

I came to the realisation of what I needed to do when I couldn’t sleep, I have a habit of thinking through my story when I can’t sleep to stop the monkey mind from keeping me awake. Lately I’d avoided this practise because I felt defeated by all the words and neglected the fact that for me thinking about it as a sleepy preoccupation leaves no room for words. A bit of a downside though is that I can’t sleep when I get in the flow of the story and so sit up into the night tapping away at my computer feeling tired but also satisfied. At the same time because I am tired I can only work for so long before I have to stop which gives me time and space to reflect before I write again. At times when I write wide awake and clear-headed, I write for so long that I feel detached from the process and resentful of it, when I have shorter sessions I have better momentum.

I’ve made a dent in the first draft of chapter five and although I have only just begun to write it but I have covered a lot more ground with the 1000 or so words that I’ve kept than I have in the past couple of weeks.