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Sunday 27 July 2014

Reaching the half way point

A milestone for me....yesterday I reached the halfway point in my novel. With 40,000 or so words I stopped to congratulate myself. Then I thought where do I go now? I didn't have an ending, I wasn't sure where my main character was going next and it all began to feel like an anti-climax. I wondered how I would have enough material to finish. So I decided to do some brainstorming.

It was a lovely evening so I went to sit on my favourite bench with my note pad and pen. I plugged myself into some music (Akon's Freedom album) and began roughing out potential ideas/directions and asking myself questions. Gradually things began to come together and finally I knew how things would end. In fact I think I'd always known and it seemed so obvious once the decision was made. How to get my character to this point will still take some working out but at least I know where I am going. It was such a relief!

I also began thinking about what I had written so far and jotted down some amendments I want to make when I come to editing. There are sections to fill out, give more detail to but in the rush to get words on paper I tend to skim over them to get the essentials down.

I am finding that my characters and story are beginning to weave into my dreams - it's like I can't switch off from  them. This does happen from time to time. When I'm fired up I walk down the road and am hardly aware of what's going on around me because I am so pre-occupied with scenes playing out in my head. I'm sure I'm not much fun to be around, tapping away on my laptop with my earphones plugged in. The housework piles up and I hate having to down tools to cook. When I'm not writing I'm reading!

We have someone coming to stay later in the week so I will have to take a break and do some housework. Having breaks is good, I think, for me anyway, as long as they are not too long. It's great to do something completely different for a time and come back renewed to write. Well, that's the plan!

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