Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Writing A Novel

Last month I took the challenge of November as Novel Writing Month and wrote a novel (50,000 words) in 30 days.  It was exciting to try to turn a short story into a novel.  People who had read the story said it would make a good novel, and I threw numerous temper tantrums saying "I don't want to write a novel; I want to write short stories." 

But when a writing acquaintance recommended that I consider joining the fun of trying to write a novel in one month, it seemed like a good idea.  I took the short story I had written as an outline and started.

I got a friend to read it when I was at about 20,000 words and could not imagine how I could get to 50,000.  But one thing led to another, one character led to another and voila!  a novel was born.

The interesting thing is that I fell in love with my characters.  It was kind of like reading a novel -- which I have done a lot of over the years -- except that I was the writer of the novel I was reading.

I don't know when or where I will show this to others, but I must admit that writing the novel was very empowering. Sphere: Related Content