It turns out the hardest part of writing that book was the beginning, for all sorts of reasons, mostly as I got to know the characters and importantly, getting their voices sounding natural in my head. Once I hit the 20k mark the wheels left the ground and we were off. Five months of writing later the first draft was finished.
So a lot of writing, lessons learned and many adventures later, we find ourselves in 2013. Chasing Innocence has been published for over a year, I've written a lot of words during this time, with one novella: Mahrie now also published. I'm currently writing the sequel to Chasing Innocence, titled: Hunting Demons. With two books published, some award short listings under my belt and a lot of great Amazon reviews, I feel I'm on the right track. The sequel would be a breeze!
The thing is, progress has been slow. The slowness is not because I don't know what's going to happen through the core of the story, or because I don't know these characters. I recently did a calculation and guess what? The average daily word count meant it would take seven years to finish the first draft. And now I think about it, didn't I really struggle at the beginning of Mahrie too?
So the lessons I take from this as I approach 20k of words, is that I'm just a slow starter when it comes to getting a story underway. Daily word counts are not helpful in my planning, but sitting at the desk and steadily chipping away at the story is. Despite knowing the characters very well, it has been about finding their voices, hearing their thoughts in the moment to moment. It's getting there. The wheels feel like they might soon leave the ground.
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