I’m trying a novel idea with my, uh, novel. When I was writing Continuity, I had pages of notes, Excel spreadsheets trying to keep track of dates and events, and a while when I was sitting with my calculator, playing with, “Wait, if she was born here, then she was how old when he did this, and how old would he have been?” Dates are an important element of Continuity, so it was imperative I kept track, but it was challenging.
For my next novel, which is an historical novel, I’ve created a timeline. I don’t know yet if this will really help, but so far it’s been great because I have lots of room to lay out the back story, real historical events, and pieces of my story. I’m hoping this will help me insure the flow is right, and that I don’t accidentally have events in my story happening out of place with the historical events surrounding them. I’ve been playing with a timeline program called Tiki Toki, and so far it’s been quite easy to use.
This is the first time I’ve had a solid idea of where the novel is going to end. I spent about three years working on Continuity, and I didn’t have the ending for about a year and a half. And then it took that second year and a half to tweak it, perfect it, and get it just where I (or actually the character) wanted it to be (and that’s all before my agent’s revisions and then those rewrites and….).
This month, I plan on using Nanowrimo to get my novel started (National Novel Writing Month: During the month of November, write a 50,000 word novel). I love Nanowrimo. I’ve done it many times in the past. I don’t think anyone can write a novel in a month. Let’s rephrase that. I don’t think anyone can write a solid, well-plotted, well-crafted, interesting novel in a month. But I think that Nanowrimo is fabulous for that initial word dump, for getting past your internal editor and just getting the words down on the page. Starting the novel is the absolute hardest thing to do and Nanowrimo gives you a deadline for doing it. Are you doing Nano? If so, put me down as a writing buddy (my Nano handle is jbrown).
Meanwhile, I’ve got a few thousand words to write today, so I leave you with this thought:
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. –Thomas Mann
I love that quote! I always assume that writing comes easy for most writers, and that I’M the oddball, spending hours on just one scene. 😉
Good luck with Nano! I’m not doing it this year, but it’s definitely something I’d like to give a try one of these years ;o)
Love the quote, I think I’m going to put it up on my wall!
Goodluck with your writing!
Brittany Roshelle
The Write Stuff
Thanks, Brittany! Writing is just putting one word in front of another…? Not so hard (ha!)