The time has come to write.

I am finally satisfied with the rough outline for the Forgotten Magics series. This has taken almost eleven years, from the first time I got an idea when I was twelve years old. This seems a ridiculously long time to come up with a rough outline, but to my defense I don’t think I was really ready to start writing until now. As well as that, the plot took an unexpected wrong turn some years ago. I was too fixed on making the plot work with what I had instead of fixing what was wrong. Last week I was finally able to find the solution to my problem and move on with the story.

Now I am enjoying the great feeling of knowing I am on the right path. There is a lot of work ahead of me. I still have to fill in the gaps in the plot andI know that much of what I have written so far will never make it to the finished draft, its still important though. I am getting to know the story better with every scene I write.

People often ask me how my writing goes. Until now, I have only had excuses for them that I am still in research mode. That was an excuse for I was only procrastinating. Now I can hold my head high and honestly say what my progress is. It is a strangely exhilarating feeling. I think it also has something to do with that I have now started to consider myself a writer.

 

My love for writing

My time for writing is at night. I put on my headphones and listen to classical or relaxing music. I let my mind wander. Everyone else has gone to bed so I have the whole night to myself.

For some time I just sit there thinking about what I am going to write. I try to get the feel of the surroundings, the characters and why they are all here at this time. When it feels like I am standing there with them, I search for right moment to start writing from.

Then I start to write. There is no stopping and thinking, there is no time for it. I have to get everything that is happening down on paper now or maybe lose it forever. Their lives can not be put on hold every time I want to question their motives. Sometimes I write things that I never would have thought of, things that seem strange or I would think uncharacteristic of them. But for them it seems perfectly natural. It’s their world and their lives I am writing about. I created them but by no means do I control them.

A writer soon realizes that he or she has been given the chance to travel to a new world. To be the first one to got there. For a writer being able to read the next page or chapter of the novel is even more exiting than when we read a book we bought. The story is so close to our hearts that the anticipation it over whelming.

For me every time I write a chapter or a scene. I cant wait to find out what happens next. I use scene cards but they are only a few sentence describing what could happen here. One only says ” She is in her office going over matters with her assistant and the master of the royal treasury when a messenger comes rushing in”  The first time I wrote that scene I had no idea what was really happening there I just new that there where some key events that needed to happen. Many more characters showed up in this scene than I had planed for. Characters I had never met before. They just appeared fully fleshed, like they had an appointment to be there all along.

I will not use that scene not in the way I wrote it but it will come in handy in another place of my book. The characters that showed up there may not be used for that scene again, but now that I know them I know I will see them again one day.

The beauty of writing for me is what I descover every time I start. I may never use what I have writtten but the world opens up to me and I listen and learn. I may often find my self sitting in front of my computer starting at a blank page wondering what to write. After awhile the creativity is gone. Over thinking what I am about to write seems to take all the joy out of writing.

Instead I try to think of a place. I put a character in that place and start writing. I started a whole new book doing this exerse. I needed to write but I could not focus on this book so I instead went through all my old ideas trying to find something I could use. I never thought what I was writing would become anything more than a writing exercise. Instead I discovered a new story just from a small sentence on a peace of paper. In that one night I got a plot, about a dozen characters and with the aid of my boyfriend and his friend a whole new world to write about.

Sometimes I feel like the books have already been written and are there waiting for me. That I am just missing the special key that enables me to write them. For me that missing key is my lack of English vocabulary. I have read hundreds of books in English and understand them perfectly. Sadly I don’t use English as much as I would want. I would love to be able to speak English every day so that I could familiarize myself with how the language works.

I don’t let this stop me from writing. I try my best to look for ways to improve my writing. I keep on reading as much as I can to continue learning and I find ways to practice what I know. Like this blog. I never realized how much this would help me. If I had only started sooner imagine where I would be today. Better late than never. Now instead of reading what others have to say hoping that they will bring me the golden key to my success, I am writing. Writing about things I love to talk about, practicing and enjoying every minute. I have finally found the golden key I was missing.

 

Writing at night

I am finding that it isn’t as easy as I thought to create everything from scratch. I am having fun doing this but it still puts me in a tight spot sometimes. Originality is essencial when it comes to writing these days. If I want my book to stand out among the millions of others being written each year I have to have something new. So far I am doing great. I have spent years in creating my world just for this purpose and I think it is worth it. My world is coming to gather nicely. By waiting for that great idea my world has evolved on its own and the peaces fit.

I had suffered for a great time for the plot of my story was great, the characters were great, but there was a big part missing. Why was all this happening? Why where they looking for the forgotten magic, why was it so important. Then all of sudden on one night just two months ago it came to me. It was odd for I had been working on this book for over ten years now and with no real back round story what so ever. Now my book is finally moving forward at a quick pace. Once the key ingredient had been added I could make the puzzle work. The plot came to life and the world was starting to take on a clearer form.

I have just recently started using scene cards and I tell you they are saving my life. Before when ever I would get an idea I would think it over and wonder if this would work for my novel. More often than not I would dismiss the ideas because I could not find a spot for them, not right away anyhow. This wasn’t helping me so I desided to put every idea that came to me weather it was for this book or could fit into any other book I was writing or could write and you know what. The ideas started flooding out. Now I have more ideas for scenes than I have put to gather these last ten years. It will take some time to get them in a right order or if I will use them at all but they are there for me to do with as I please. This at least keeps me on my toes. Now I don’t care how lame the idea is it goes into the stack anyway.

The progress of the book is going alright for now. I wish I could get through the first chapter though. I have to find a way to stop changing it over and over again so I can keep on going with the story. Now I have started the draft of the first chapter and hopefully this one will do for I get most of my ideas when I am writing. The characters seem to tell me what they are doing and what is going to happen next. If I keep changing it I can never know what is going to happen and there for cant write any other chapter. I have tried this before and when I do write I chapter further in the book I usually toss it when I have changed something that makes that one unusable in any way.

I have the whole day tomorrow just dedicated to my writing it will be interesting to see how well I do and if I will be able to finish the first one and maybe the second one as well. There will be a progress report here tomorrow evening. Wish me well.

p.s. If you find major errors in this post, spellings, wording, grammar or anything feel free to correct me. I need to practice my English and I love to get some input to help me out. Thanks.

 

Why this blog and why now.

The biggest dream in my life is to finish my books. When I started writing I had this romanticized idea about writing. I could see myself writing and before I new it I would have my book in my hands, a best seller. It did not take me long to figure out that imagining it happen and doing it were two very different things. Through the years I have discovered that to be able to write a whole book, a novel, takes a lot of time and hard work. First you have to create a world, a whole new world when you are writing fantasy novels. This world has to be believable, it has to have everything a realistic world would have. Then there have to be people and animals and plants even weather. You die a quick and painful death if the people that inhabit your world are only two dimensional and flat. They have to come to life. Then you need a plot. A conflict in your world that makes the reader want to visit this exiting location. Something that draws them in, hooks them from the start and wont for the life of it let go until the very end and maybe not even then. Your words need to paint a picture so real that they are no longer reading your book, they are there suffering, crying, celebrating, fighting, laughing, dying and surviving with the characters.

Everybody can write. That is common knowledge, but not everyone can write well. That was my greatest disappointment. I thought that what I was writing had to be a work of art, I would be the next J.K.Rowling. I do love my stories. The characters in them are very dear to me and always will be. My failure lay in the wording. I simply could not produce that magic that made my writing come to life. I do admit that it took me a few years to come to this realization so I had some time in blissful ignorance that I will always cherish. Once my own personal editor (wiser with experience in reading great books that are a peace of art) kicked in every scribble of writing I did became some ill form of horse manure, riddled with lice and infested with worms. As gross as that sounded I still think I was understating it. Maybe this is some kind of defense mechanism build into me, to judge everything I do to the point of certain death.

This did end more chapters than I dear to count. I am getting better control of the editor inside my head and my writing has benefited greatly from her strong comments on my work. When I started getting outside input on my work I could see where my flaws where at and do my best to fix them. It’s a process and every time I write I am one step closer to where I want to be. There is where this blog comes in. I have been struggling to finish this book for many years now, at least for the past three years since I started taking this seriously. You could say that I am only starting still where I can’t stop re writing every first chapter I make. There are now at least twelve versions of the first chapter some only slightly changed others not even resembling each other. I am hoping to puzzle them together so I can use most of them in the first part of the novel.

This blog I have created to help me keep myself on track. To commit to writing every day until the day I finish. This will become a wonderful way to practice my writing and my English. I still have a long way to go in learning to write correctly, this is after all my second language. Unfortunately for me I am even worse at writing in my own language. I just don’t seem to have the passion for it.  English is the language I feel in, the language I think in, the language that seems somehow magical to me.