{"id":690,"date":"2009-01-31T09:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T09:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/?p=690"},"modified":"2009-01-31T09:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T09:51:00","slug":"forced-start-but-were-on-our-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/31\/forced-start-but-were-on-our-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Forced start… but we’re on our way"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t written for over two months, so when it came time to start Arcadian in earnest, it was difficult to work up the energy to get going, especially since I have to carry my laptop with me to London everyday if I want to write. The lazy side of me wanted to put starting off until this weekend, throwing out the schedule, but I managed to get going and once I did, it wasn’t so difficult.<\/p>\n

Whenever I have a break in writing, it’s always difficult to get back into it. My mind seems to ask why I have to write and then my heart argues that I love to write, I enjoy it, so get going! It’s war, but with a peaceful outcome once the muse gives me a royal kick up the backside and I finally start writing.<\/p>\n

I have hit a snag already though. Something which I feared when I had written out the plot outline and seen the length of it! The other day when my laptop had succumbed to a lack of battery and died on me (after around 3.5 hours of writing. good laptop!) I went through the plot outline for the novel and roughly divided it into chapters. I was a little unnerved when I found it might be another 30 chapters. I had already completed 4 at this point, and my average length for a chapter is around 5000 words in this story. That means the novel is looking at coming out around the 170,000 words mark. Far too high if I want to get it trade published by approaching publishers and agents. When I made it home, I checked some of the first novels of other paranormal romance authors and they all varied between 90,000 and 130,000. Most publishers state they want a length of 70,000 to 100,000. If I can get an agent, I might be able to get away with 130,000… or perhaps if my submitted three chapters are good enough, then a publisher might overlook the length… but 170,000??? I’m really hoping that my chopping up of the plot into chapters is wrong and it does come out nearer to 130,000. When I had finished writing up the plot outline, I had an inkling that it was no longer a 100,000 word story as I had first anticipated, but rather one nearer to 130,000. I’m still hoping that my instincts are right on that one!<\/p>\n

So, the word count so far (and pretty much for just this past week) is:<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
Arcadian<\/b>
27,791<\/b> \/ 125,000
[22.2%]<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I’m going to stick with 125,000 as the target. I’m almost at the quarter mark in that case and probably 2 chapters from the first gateway\/point of no return.<\/p>\n

I also realised on the train home last night that we’re seeing a lot from the heroine’s POV but not a tremendous amount from the hero. He’s had around 1.25 chapters so far, and she’s had around 3.75. Right now it’s important we’re with her though, and I know there are a lot more chapters with the hero to come in the 1\/4 to 1\/2 way point in the story.<\/p>\n

That’s all for now. I’ll try to keep these posts regular. I’ve been so focused on editing and improving my stories recently that as I write, I find myself thinking about previous chapters and things that might need to be changed or chopped to keep the pace. I’m just writing them down in a notebook for now and I’ll address them when I get around to the second draft. I’m not one for tinkering as I write. I’m of the “get it written, then get it right” school of philosophy.<\/p>\n

Time for house stuff now – washing, tidying, a bit of exercise, and installing a new shower with my dad!<\/p>\n

I really want to keep writing. I haven’t felt the writing bug like this for a long time. It doesn’t help that I almost missed my stop on the train last night because I was so engrossed in writing and I left the hero on the verge of a rather swoon-worthy speech to the heroine!<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t written for over two months, so when it came time to start Arcadian in earnest, it was difficult to work up the energy to get going, especially since I have to carry my laptop with me to London … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,63,8,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paranormal-romance","category-urban-fantasy","category-vampire-romance","category-vampires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.felicityheaton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}