The Plan is Working...

Two more nights and the read through of 22 chapters is complete. Before going to bed last night the folder was closed, the work area set and the laptop opened ready for work. 

The plan is for my alarm to wake me at 6am, allowing time to shower, have breakfast and get everything ready for work, I was sat at my laptop ready to type by 7am. That gives me a good hour to work.

I had already started working on chapter 23, and a quick scan through the first page and I was back on track with the story so far. I haven't written a sentence in over 4 months, it seemed strange to be sitting back at the keyboard waiting for words to emerge. 

Over the last few months my laptop has been used daily, for all kinds of things, checking emails, searching Google, playing games... so it's not as if I didn't know where the keys were, but sitting down to write creatively is very different. There has to be structure, there has to be continuing plot, there has to be a consistent writing style. It is a task you learn and I certainly have learned that the more you do the easier it becomes, the brain does seem to learn the process. 

I soon got back into the flow and in the hour have managed to write 1,800 words. The story has progressed and as I break to go and do my day job, I feel the plan to get back to writing has worked.

The break from writing has given me some distance from my book and re-reading it was a good way to re-connect. As I read the story it felt fresh again and as I read it, I realised I was actually enjoying the story, and that gives me hope that others will too.

For now, the hardest part is yet to come. The ending. So important to finish a story with a good ending, a believable ending, an ending that leaves the reader wanting to read more, a second, third book.

I am fortunate, I have the ending all planned out in my head, I have the skeleton of the ending mapped out on my timeline, my big, black notebook - a large A3 artists pad where every idea, thought, new discovery is jotted down. A notebook that is frequently referred to, all my characters are in there, all the plans to the city... 

It is all there, waiting to be converted into the final few chapters.

For now, that's where it needs to remain until I have done another day at the office. The work of a first time author has to be fitted in around a normal daily life schedule. I do not have the luxury of saying writing is my job, I just have the dream that I will be able to say that one day, in the future.