Responses and Determinations

Wow. Lots of interesting responses to yesterday's post about my return to the library and decision to attempt NaNoWriMo in November. A lot of support and interesting perspectives. My friend who is a published author of books for children and young adults was totally supportive telling me to write what I felt, that all of the rest would follow. On-line friends helped out with YA forum links and confirmation that 50,000 words is not out of the realm of a YA novel at all. So I think I'll forge ahead with my research and see what happens with that. If I can't get the plot ironed out in my head, at least the salient points of it, I won't do this, but if I can meld the research and the plot in my head and outline, I probably will.

Writing this story will be a means of exorcising some ghosts for me. I'm not necessarily going to be writing this for publication as much as writing this because I need to get this written. It's a plot bug that crawled into my head several years ago and has kept on growing and growing until it simply has to be excised. The least painful way for me to do this will be by writing it. But as with all historically-based things that I have done, I have to do the research.

Writing anything is like a roller coaster ride, the elation of the storyline that sits there and begs to be told are the uphill portions, the actual process of writing it though, the angst and the annoyances, well those are the downhill portions. You need both parts to have a successful ride, and in many ways it is the downhill parts that you live for. I found a marvelous quote today that I will share with you. "The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself 'Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.' And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure." - Thornton Wilder