I'm a Different Writer Today

Last year I was zooming through my novella. This year... not so much. At this time last year I had nearly 10 000 words. I was more than halfway through the challenge and as it would turn out, halfway through the novella itself. This year, I'm at about 4200 words, just over a quarter of the way through the challenge.

I finally decided on a topic, obviously, and the story that's resulted from it is very different than what I would normally write. It's come out as a supernatural mystery. Wasn't expecting that. Picture this, I have five characters. For the first three chapters, they're senior citizens. Ingrid, who has turned into the central character is 87 years old. I didn't choose her name by the way. She was named in the topic I chose. By chapter 4, Ingrid is 21. Nathaniel was 89 and by chapter 4 he's 19. Jackson was 94, he's now 32. No one knows how old Lila was but she's 24 now. I wasn't going to name all five, but now that I've named four it seems rude not to include Russell. He's presently 36 and he was... we'll say 90. What did they do? They crossed a river. And no, this story does not take place in an alternate universe. Nor is the river magic and nor is time travel possible. Pretty trippy right? Yeah, I have no clue if this is turning out well or not. I'm just going with it. I think I'm going to stop writing for the night and look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow. Then kick its ass and finish it.

I was very slow getting going this morning. I think I only started writing at two o'clock. Writing and being in a crappy mood do not go well together. I found this out today. Go figure.

If nothing else, this will be an interesting experiment for me. New genre, totally different kind of plot, I'm working with some mythological elements on this one. It's quite a change from the silly, goofy, random novella I wrote last year. I don't know if it was my bad mood or what, but most of the topics this year seemed quite dark. Either way, at least two characters in this novella will have a happy ending. That's a lie. Only two characters in this novella will have a happy ending. Never thought I would be that kind of author... turns out I am. Look at me discovering things about myself!

Turns out:
1) Writing while bitchy = bad writing.
2) I can and will kill characters off
3) Writing in a new genre brings unexpected and surprising results.

There you have it. Day one of the competition. Hopefully day two is more productive.

Lauren.