BellaOnline Forums Career Fiction Writing Are you writing your novel this year?

The new year is the time many writers make a resolution to start their novel. Are you writing yours this year? Or have you already started?

This week's article begins the series on planning a novel - the first step is deciding just how much plotting you want to do before you begin writing.

To plan or not to plan

I am working on 2. I started them both during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month www.nanowrimo.org) One is a littl under 40k words that i started in 2005 and the other is half that started last year. My goal is to have the 40k one first draft by the middle of February, do a quick edit of it, set it aside for a month and write as much as possible in the 20k for that month. Then go back to the 1st, do a second draft and hopefully be able to find someone to read it this spring. I am crossing my fingers that this will be the year I start sending it out to publishers!

I'm pitching my third novel to agents and writing my fourth. I'm also beginning a non-fiction book: the memoirs of an amazing man whose 44-year-old wife has been in a coma for eight years because of a mysterious parasite in her brain.

Yay!! I love to hear pitching and writing news....I'm writing a non-fiction book for teens and am waiting for a publisher to decide on my guidebook to Vancouver. They're in touch regularly, keeping me updated on the long process, which is LONG. The latest stint is waiting for the sales reps to see if it's a good sell to bookstores -- looks like the publisher and editors have decided it's a go! All up to the sales reps now, I guess. I really hope they take it, it's such a great book! Fingers and toes and eyes crossed.......

No fiction books for me, though.

I would love to visit Vancouver one day. It seems, from the pictures and shows I've seen, to be a very beautiful part of the world.

Hopefully, this will be the year that I actual finish one of the three novels that I have started. I'm not picky, I'd take a full first draft of any of them in a heart-beat!

That said, I turn 30 in 2007, and since my lucky numbers seem to be 3 and 7, I've decided that this is MY year. (Turning 30 isn't a bad motivator either!)

My favorite number is seven. I have picked this year to quit talking about writing a novel and to actually write one.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! Here's hoping we both make it!

My own novel has been sitting on the back burner for about 2 years but recently I decided too that this is the year! I got it out yesterday to work on.

Have about 6 chapters so far but over the intervening months it was always on my mind so I have lots of new ideas and have to go back and make some changes to accommodate the new ideas.

Even tho I wasn't sitting at the computer writing, the story line and characters have been living this story out in my mind for months. All I have to do is capture it all on paper now.

Is anyone using the Law of Attraction to try and bring their book into reality? I thought this was an interesting idea so I'm using visualization to help me with creative ideas and ultimate success.

Joan

Karen - we are sisters in ink! Tee Hee.

Joan - Be careful, those characters might just hi-jack your computer and write their own novel.

Chel