My writing progress this week

If we have to talk about words that form a narrative structure on the page – the answer is none. No progress at all.

But if we're talking progress on the story – that's a different matter. It's been buzzing in my head. I've been making notes. Watching movies. Reading contemporary romances and plays. And today I take the plunge and we start with the wordage.

I've NEVER done this much pre-thought and planning of a novel. And all my contemporaries thus far have involved much more planning than the paranormals. I wonder if that's because I started writing the paranormals before I got a handle on plotting and so my default position is to just start writing and work the rest out later. Perhaps it's because I've been writing fantasy for so long and I'm just a newbie with contemporaries and so I feel the need to be sure of what I'm doing. Perhaps it's because I've been a contracted writer and want to be again, sooner rather than later, and so I feel more pressure to get things right from the beginning.

For this book, I have to say it's because I'm taking on some of the bard. It's a bit scary, to be trying to re-do a master like Shakespeare. But then if I don't start, I'll never know if I can do it.

Such is the strangeness of writing. Every book is a new adventure and so every start is a new step into something you've never done before. You know you can writing novels – but you've no idea that you can write THIS novel. Most jobs, once you've learned to do it, you've nailed it and just keep repeating over and over again. Not with writing.

Tomorrow, I've got some writerly folks coming over for a day of writing. I'm looking forward to it – it's lovely to have the rare moments where writing becomes a communal activity.

My plan is by next week to have a good 20,000 words of this novel written (not taking the weekend off) and hopefully by then to have a really clear idea of how it's going. That should be about a quarter of the way through.