"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." [Anton Chekhov]
I'm certainly not turning The Stevensons into a writing blog, but I feel full of inspiration today, so bear with another post about my embryonic novel.
I expanded the first sentence to the first page last night...
and then had such trouble falling asleep as I considered my story. I felt intoxicated by possibility. I also felt overwhelmed by the process of translating this tale that I'm starting to cherish from my imagination on to paper.
I've decided to give myself a deadline, because those seem to work best for me. I'm going to aim to write around 1,000 words each day. Sounds doable. If I have a first draft exactly 12 weeks from today - October 25th - I'll be thrilled. That would put my novel around 84,000 words, or 350 pages. Perfect. If I don't do it now, I probably never will.
I love the concept behind National Novel Writing Month (in November), especially this excerpt:
Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.
This isn't exactly what I'm doing (yet), but I absolutely love that thought. The truth is that I'm primarily trying to write a novel to discover if I can actually finish, as "follow through" has never been my strong suit, and if what I write ends up having any spark at all.
Keep your fingers crossed for sparks!