Back to my First Novel

 

I’m coming full circle.

I set a plan to write a novel in 1999, but never put sufficient time into doing it until certain ‘other’ things fell into place around my life. All excuses ran their course in 2007, and I began writing.

Or so I thought…

From July 2007 to June 2010 – I went through a period of Stop-Start (and sometimes the Stops lasted for months … and months … and months …) It wasn’t that I didn’t have ideas (because I sure damn did), but the execution. I kept deviating into a complicated mess that was tragic. Sheer tragic.

And then – in June 2010 – I slapped myself – and made a promise to sort my act out. Lo behold, I had completed my first full novel after 6 months. And I was proud of it. And I felt creativity in my fingers. And I wanted to share it with the world. And I wanted the major big publishing deal.

Then reality kicked in. Mainly my first Festival of Writing 2011  (York – UK – that I loved by the way).

I’d written a novel where the main protagonist was a talking cat.
The length was 148k words
POV/Headhopping was all over the place – I had 8 POV in Chapter 1 alone!!
There was enough backstory to turn a Trailer into a movie itself.

I shelved it.

Since then, I’ve written 10 more novels – where I’ve learnt from the FoW and from fellow writers to hone my craft. I get it much better now than I did then.

And that brings me to why we’re here. I’m going full circle.

Novel 2 to 9 were all YA. N10 (done) and 11 (to be redrafted) are MG.

I’ve developed a respect for writing to fit the target market … and so Novel 1 – will be redone as a MG Trilogy – with a very different plot/twists/characters than what I did 6 years ago.

I’ll do what I can, and I hope I’ll have it ready for FoW16 – Sept 2016. I hope.

Well… I can try.

Circle.