I've been writing this young adult fantasy novel for over a year now, and yesterday I hit 60,000 words, meaning I've only got about 30,000 words to go! Now, I realize that a year is a long time for only 60,000 words, but that includes several false starts, when I had 10,000 to 20,000 words down, only to realize that the point of view was all wrong. Or the protagonist needed to be older, or a different gender. My early attempts were pretty bad, to be honest. I knew the basic idea of the story, but not how I wanted to tell it. Now, I've got something that actually feels like a book! And that's pretty exciting.
The plot of Water Magic goes like this: Two years after her baby brother Jayson disappears, 15-year-old Violet Cantwell is haunted daily by thoughts of what may have happened to him. Then she and her brother Caden, along with two of their friends, discover the entrance to a faerie world in the basement of an abandoned house. When they pass into Abernwyth they meet Loper, a Guardian who has been protecting the portal, and Zilas, his teenage apprentice. The faeries take them to meet Floridyn the Mage, the most powerful sorceress in the province. It's Floridyn who divines that Jayson has been kidnapped by the mysterious sorcerer Ezekiel Stone. And what's more, the sorcerer has been stealing children from every province in Abernwyth. Now the travelers and the faeries must band together to rescue Jayson—and all of the other children—before it's too late.
There are a few subplots that include a mandrigal (someone who can talk to animals), a clan of canyon-dwelling ninjas, a wicked dragon breeder, and a proud desert king.
The reason it's called Water Magic is that there are many different types of magic that faeries can do—elemental magic, color magic, sound magic, etc.—but water magic is the most ancient and powerful (and, as you might have guessed, it's an important feature of the story).
I usually aim to write about 1,000 words a day. But my writing is flowing really well lately, so I've set myself a goal of reaching 70,000 words by next Tuesday, when we leave on our vacation.
What about you—what are you writing right now? Do you set yourself writing goals and stick to them, or play it by ear?
Congrats on the first 60,000 words! You're nearly there :) Think, soon you'll have the joy of decimating your baby in the revision process!
ReplyDeleteI'm also writing a fantasy, and in many ways I can relate to you: the false starts, the goal of 1000 words per day, the quick flow of words to the page -- we even read the same literary agents and editors, haha.
Your plot sounds intriguing, I'll definitely keep checking in to see how you're doing.
Good luck!
Thanks :)
ReplyDeleteI checked out your blog; looks very cool!
Writing is so much harder than a lot of people realize, so it's nice to be part of the online writing community, where other people are going through the same process you're going through.
And revisions — yeah, so not looking forward to those!
No one really understands how hard it is to write a novel until they have tried, even a bad novel is hard to write just because it's a novel.
ReplyDeleteYou are working on a good novel, that's on a whole different level. I look forward to reading it when you are at that point.
I hate it when I reread something I have written and realize that it should have been a semicolon instead of a comma!
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