Creative Writing Review Now That It's New Years Day!

Creative Writing Review now that it's New Years Day!

2013 was a terrible year. I've never been superstitious about the number thirteen before, but I'm glad it's over. However, on a positive note, I discovered that I became very creative and did loads of writing. Some of my best chapters ever were written in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep!

I participated in a couple of conferences and my book started to take its form. It's a fantasy novel about a student at an academy of magic. By the end of the year I had loads of characters, probably over 70, including two rabbits called Flopsy and Dipsy. I had been "Pantsing" along but I knew I had to go back and put in the plot, once I'd discovered what it was. I was surprised to find that my main character was not just ancient as I'd supposed, but was actually a time traveller with an intricate back story.

Then, November came along, and with it NaNoWriMo. I'd never participated before, but this year I decided to take the plunge. Well, I must say it was amazing. First of all, NaNoWriMo stipulates that you must write a new book, so I decided to write the back story of the ancient teacher in my current work in progress (WIP). I, therefore, wrote the prequel to the WIP and this is sorting out the plot of the original book.

I wrote nearly every day and, to my surprise, actually reached the 50,000 words required to "win" NaNoWriMo. The best part, however, was being able to post questions in the forums and become "buddies" with writers and aspiring writers from all over the world.

I've also found my writerly voice and know the genre I want to write which is  MG/YA Fantasy with
some Science Fiction and Steam Punk included.

Fantasy is actually quite difficult to write as you have to create a whole "world" with rules. Also, if it relates to the real world you have to check your facts. My main character is on the run from France with her magician father at the beginning of the book. At first I had set the story in 1870, but then I discovered I had problems with the Franco Prussian War and the enormous bustles that women wore at that time. So I time travelled the story to start in 1899. I still had to research Victorian England and find out lots of little details such as, what the Victorians ate for breakfast. The answer to the question is: a lot if you were rich, but not much if you were poor - maybe a crust of bread or some gruel!

I am more of a "pantser" than a planner and let the characters tell the story. I think that I now have the plots for several books and have a vast cast of characters. This is because I've had to include the ancestors of some of the characters in the original WIP.

Once I have finished the first draft I will edit it into several books as there are a few separate plots that interlink over more than a century.

Hopefully, this will be the year I get published.

Happy New Year!

Jacqueline
Ps Please leave a comment about your own writing experiences, especially if you also took part in NaNoWriMo. I will try and post an excerpt from the prequel.