Number 1. Write a book

I completed this one about December last year. At the moment it only has a rough working title, but I have now sent it to an agent to see if I can get it published, so I am hoping that they can come up with something better!

 It began as writing a story. The idea of my main character had been in my head for a while and I had written the first few pages of the story a number of times, and then lost the copies along the way, it varied a little each time but the main idea stayed the same. Once I got through those first few pages I began to realise that I needed to come up with a rough plot – so that I knew where the story was going. I did a bit of research and found a few really good websites that gave me a lot of great ideas for creating my world. The world creation aspect was a lot of fun, working out a history of the people in my story, the climate, what they used in place of money, the types of buildings they lived in, and what sort of animals roamed the world with them.

 I also began to read “How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy” by Orson Scott Card, one of my favourite authors, and during the world creation side of my journey I kept his words in mind. He said; if it looks like a rabbit, moves like a rabbit, and tastes like a rabbit then you should call it a rabbit. A lot of the animals in my story are similar, or the same, as what we have here. It didn’t make sense in the story to create things that were completely different and give them different names, although on one or two occasions I have varied the spelling just a wee bit to fit in with the culture of the people using the words. Once the world was created my characters, or character at this point, then had a set of rules they had to operate within. It’s a science fantasy novel so the ‘magic’ they use also has rules.

The characters within the story could then be developed further by the world, we are all a product of our upbringing and the circumstances and manner in which we live, and it had to be the same for the characters if I wanted to make them feel real. I worked our roughly where the story was headed and began to weave the other characters into the world, trying to give them each an individuality that would make them easy to remember, and make them their own people. They each had ups and downs, and lessons to learn along the way which changed them, and I was right there with them experiencing everything they felt. In a lot of ways I didn’t feel like I was writing the characters but more like I was meeting them and getting to know these people that already existed in a world I was just discovering.

 The more I put down the more comfortable I became with the characters emotions, and with writing how I felt, or perhaps it’s better to say that I was becoming better at identifying how each emotion made me feel and putting it into words. When I was writing about fear I would begin to feel my stomach clench in knots and that moment where everything suddenly zooms into sharp focus as the adrenaline pumps around your body. It was the same with each emotion, I’m not sure whether it was writing about it that made me feel it, or if I was making myself feel it in order to better write about it. I remember sitting on the train writing a particularly hard bit, and working really hard not to cry as I did it, the other people on the train would have thought I was completely crazy!

 I learned a lot, about myself, and about the craft of writing, and I am certain that it is a learning journey that will never end. I am now putting into practice all the things I learned from writing the first book into writing a second – and I am sure the things I learn from the first to will be put into practice when I start the third! Now I just need to get it published! So that’s the first item off the list!