Novel Writing 3: The Long and Winding Road.

How the road turns unexpectedly.

Ten weeks ago, I hit the halfway point on my first novel, and was assessing where to go next with my story. I had expected to be able to press on quite quickly from that point, but life had other plans! Since I was taking a long-overdue holiday, I soon found myself with little time set aside to write, and a number of other priorities taking precedence.

So up  until last week, barely a word was written for my novel. There were a number of other writing feats that took place:

• I wrote a new story for the #TwitterFicton Festival.
• I developed my characters and plotlines further for my novel.
• I wrote story outlines for two new Inspector Ambrose mysteries (some readers will rejoice at this, I know).

As I am now travelling around Australia for my ‘real job’ I am finding plenty of time to write in airports, on planes, and in the back of cars (unlike George R. R. Martin). This has led me to get some momentum behind my novel again, and I should pass 45,000 words soon enough. A few unexpected turns have come up in the novel – necessitated by the way the story has developed. I also started to go down a very different tangent before I decided it just didn’t feel right, and reverted to my original plan.

More updates will be forthcoming soon – all going according to plan, I’ll have my first draft finished by the end of the month, and then I’ll be taking a break to let the manuscript incubate a little whilst Inspector Ambrose gets another run.

Exciting times ahead!