Starting in the beginning of May, my writing has gone on a hiatus due to the fact that I will be taking an intensive work-related course in July so I’m getting ahead on my studies for it in May and June. Despite the lack of news on this blog, I’ve been busy writing since my last post, mostly with rewriting my novel, now called “Daughter of Barra” from a first person point of view. Initial feedback was positive on the change in point of view so I’ve sent it out to my trusty circle of beta readers and hope to get their reactions to it by the time the end of July comes around. I feel this rewrite is a lot better than the first draft with a few major changes to the story and I feel this new point of view reflects better the personal sense of the story in that it is really about one character. Some people think that writing in the first person should be messy or disjointed as if the character is putting down random thoughts on a paper. I don’t know if this is true or not but I do know that I feel this novel works better in first person then third so I’m going with that for now. If my beta readers feel it is horrible then I’ll get to work changing it back.
I was recently going through some files and I found my initial synopsis of my novel from before I wrote the first draft. It was interesting to see how the story had changed and evolved. The very first idea I had of the story was more of a “three musketeers set in space” and I suppose from a certain point of view it still has similar themes but it’s not exactly that anymore. My biggest takeaway was that when plotting out the initial storyline, there’s no need to get too bogged down in details because there’s a chance it will all change so once you have your main ideas down, just start writing.
The most annoying part of my hiatus is that as the days go by, I get ideas for stories, either for the novels I have planned or for new ones and I have to content myself with simply noting the ideas and not taking them further for now. Once August comes around, assuming all things stay as they are, my four main projects will be going over “Daughter of Barra” again with the intention of starting to send it to publishers for rejections 🙂 and moving this blog over to an actual “writer” website from which I could potentially sell my novels eventually if I go the self-published route. From the writing point of view I will be working on the sequel to “Daughter of Barra.” I say sequel but it will be a larger story with more characters while Daughter of Barra is really the origin story for one of the characters. You could say Daughter of Barra is the prequel for a story not yet written. I will also be working on my first fantasy novel. I am trying to be very careful with fantasy as its a very busy field and the thing I don’t want the most is for someone to think that my work is derivative (Hello Eragon). I feel I’ve come up with an original enough opening first act and then I’ll see where the story goes. Well that’s all the news for now and I probably won’t get an update on this blog till the end of July.
Have a good summer everyone!!!