WIP update: it's DONE!

Today, a full six weeks later than I had planned, the rough draft of Water Magic is complete! I don't know what happened, other than I kept realizing I had more things that needed to be resolved, so I kept adding new scenes which turned into new chapters. Still, the important thing is, it's done. Whew!

Here are some fun facts about the book:

Idea first dreamt up in: Autumn 2005
Started writing in: March 2009
Genre: Young adult fantasy
Contains: Magic, faeries, kidnapping, dragons, giant lizards, water spirits, moonbirds, orcas, demons, and a binturong.
Final word count: 100,685
Chapters: 53

Now comes the long wait. I'm putting the manuscript away for a month before starting revisions. The fun part? I get to work on something new! I've got lots of ideas clamoring for attention in my head, so it's just a matter of which one wins out--sci fi story? Children's book? Magical realism novel? Contemporary YA? Paranormal? A weird combination of all five?

I'll let you know.

In the meantime, anyone have any good revision tips? I'm going to need all the help I can get.

Geographical inspiration

When I was younger I was lucky enough to travel each summer to some of the most beautiful national parks in the western United States. I traveled by bus. With about fifty relatives. And my great-uncle Joe was the bus driver. But that's a story for another time. Anyway, clearly all of the amazing landscapes captured my imagination, because they keep popping up in my book:

 The geothermal features of Yellowstone National Park appear in the Silvermarsh Province in Abernwyth. 

The beautiful rock structures of Arches National Park appear as the Archlands in the northern desert province.

And Canyonlands National Park becomes home to an isolated clan of ninja-faeries.

So, what about you—does travel inspire you? Do you get your fictional settings from real places, or places you make up in your head, or both?

Water Magic

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?