"At times I think my coffee and tea addictions truly drive my artistic energy. It’s a small sacrifice for the greater good."

Novel News

Posted: 6/19/09 | Written by Jeannie | Labels: , , , , ,

fountain penImage by [phil h] via Flickr

It’s now the middle of June and it’s time for me to start thinking about NaNoWriMo. Last year I didn’t think I was going to participate in National Novel Writing Month mainly because I didn’t have a clue of what I was going to do. That is until I had a funny dream that took me a month to outline the basic plot. Well this morning on my way into work, my muse struck me with the beginning of a new novel. My muse has a habit of hitting me over the head with a hammer on occasion and today it was while I passed a crop of tall, foreboding, and dense corn -- a perfect place to hide a body. Or in my case stumble upon it while harvesting.

So naturally I’ve started to think about outlining for NaNoWriMo. After all it was last year’s product of NaNoWriMo that has launched my hopeful novel writing career. Outlining is a new thing that I’ve been doing. When writing for a newspaper or blogs outlining isn’t really that important. Your articles are short (usually) and you have in your head what you want to say. On the other hand when you are writing something as long and as detailed as an 80k+ novel things usually get confused. Inconsistencies pop up in the least likely of places and some in the most blatantly obvious places. While NaNoWriMo is a marathon of writing and these inconsistencies tend to creep in anyways, it is the outline that keeps the majority of the story in place and correct. A great editor will help with the other selective reading omissions after you’ve bribed and pleaded enough to get on their nerves.

With that said, the other novel news that I have is that my current work in progress has progressed to an editing in progress. I’ve sent it off and it’s going though the ringer with another set of eyes that are not tied so closely to the project!

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