A book in all of us??

Well so they say! Or someone said ... well I can just remember hearing somewhere that there is apparently a book in all of us.

I actually wrote one before ... a proper book I mean! I was about 14 and it started as a short story of around 15,000 words ... quite a profound story one about a girl whose mother died, whose father turned to alcohol and she ended up responsible for her younger brother and sister while her father recovered. I gave it to my mum to read, and at the end she was desperate to know what happened next! Sooo I sat there with my BBC computer (yeah those were the days!) and a very basic word processing program back then ... and I turned it into a novel. I remember it was around 40,000 words I ended up churning out!

That was the problem though - it was churned out. It was only ever really meant to be a short story or maybe a novelette (25,000 words or so and in retrospect I knew even at the time that it could have been elaborated on more!) I know that in retrospect now, but at the time, the young excited me sent it off to loads of publishers .... and then actually FILED my rejection letters in a folder! LOL

I've lost all the files now - which is a real shame really, but over the years, the times I have moved and the way technology has moved on (back when floppy discs were actually floppy!!) the files just got lost too.

Thing is, I've actually started writing again. It's not like I haven't ever written anything since ... heck I blog almost every day! LOL and I write lots of "articles" ... mainly about candlemaking, but about other stuff too and I've always been called the wordy one!!

I don't want to say too much about it because it's a little bit scary really! It's almost like admitting that I have officially actually started something that I think could actually be publishable!! It's good too ... very obviously rough draft, but it's pretty good. In the 3 days since I started it, I've already re-arranged and re-organised most of the first page to really come up with a stonker of an opener and re-written everything I've done so far about six times!!

When I sat down to write this afternoon when the kids were home from school, fed watered and ensconced in their bedrooms ... I had something like 5,000 words and had a basic structure for chapters 1, 2 and 3 although the main writing part still needed to be done.

Well, this afternoon I actually DELETED 2,604 words simply because I decided the scene didn't work!!!! I then deleted most of my chapter outlines for Chs 2 and 3 as it wasn't working and then concentrated on chapter one!

Okay I didn't actually fully delete them - I copied and pasted everything I took out into another document for "future reference!"

A book in all of us ... and you should write about what you know... Crikey I'd be arrested if I were that honest!! Sooo what I've started writing is a novel loosely based around me as the main character (funny that eh) but with LOTS of fiction interspersed with real actual events... but it IS going to be mainly fiction to protect the innocent!

The funny thing is though ... with the way my private and personal life is actually going, I don't actually know the end of the book myself yet. The ending of my own personal story will go one of two very distinct ways ... and as of yet, I still don't know which way that will be.

I will never forget the letter I got from Penguin books when the 14 year old me excitedly sent off the printed manuscripts! This letter from the Penguin Books editor was a personal one rather than a generic "thank you but blah blah" letter I got from most of them which is why I will always remember it. It said "You write as if you know the characters intricately, but you never do truly allow the reader into their personalities." I've been thinking about that all day today and I think it's why I re-hashed it so many times.

I also realised that the reasons I re-wrote and re-hashed it all so many times over the last couple of days is because I was trying to write it in the third person and I can't do that. Although it is ending up being a lot more fiction than fact, it IS my story and it needed to be written in the first person! As soon as I had figured that out, it all just started to flow!

I started to put together a rough outline in my private hand written journal (stashed somewhere it will NEVER be found!) of where things started for me, where it went from then, how I felt at each stage ... then before I knew it, I realised that THIS was my story outline.

See, I've no idea whether I will EVER do anything with this story! I know that I have more than enough to start writing it properly, and hopefully as the writing draws to a natural conclusion, I will know in my heart which way it needs to go for my characters to achieve happiness/closure. I am half hoping that once I know what my characters need ... I will know what *I* need.

Well heck it makes sense in my head anyway!

I may keep it purely personal and treat it as a personal diary never to be read by anybody else's eyes and my final closure on a very unexpected journey in my private life.

Whichever way it goes, I've been truly happy today because I've been writing again and it feels really good! In the shower this morning I had to get out mid shampoo and type a fabulous sentence out before I forgot it! Yeah the naked writer! LOL maybe I need to start a new blog! HAH!

See, this is precisely why I ALWAYS have a small notepad and at least a couple of pens at the bottom of my handbag and why I feel totally naked without my bag! Inspiration strikes at the weirdest times! Ooooh crikey ... major flashback!! I can remember when I was about 14 and trying to turn my short story into

Anyway ... although I love waffling here (yeah okay I've been drinking and smoking but I feel the most creative and inspired after just a couple glasses of wine!) so I'm back off to let my fingers go a walkin' on my outline and see where my story ends up!