Back to the Writing!

I started my writing course 'Crafting a Novel' last week. (I am now finished work, so I actually have time to write now!) I'll be taking it every Thursday until the second week of June. I've only been to one class and I'm already inspired by it! It seems to me it'll be a good course for guidance and such. The teacher Nancy, is a published author who is willing to share with us the tricks of the trade that us budding (hopeful!) novelists need to know about the industry and the actual writing of a novel. I am most excited that she will be reading some of what we write and providing feedback on style and other things that editors and publishers look for when picking up new authors.

I'm. Very. Excited.

I am on the fence about a prologue too. It's a piece I'd written many many moons ago (in 2008 I believe) as a 'flashback' for the character Nis'ku. I have several of these snapshots of her life before her work, and I was thinking I could polish/rewrite them so they can be...perhaps interludes between crucial sections of the story. I like the way Jodi Picoult does that...her stories aren't always completely linear, she sometimes sets separate chapters in a different timeframe (orienting the reader with the date at the beginning of the chapter, I include the exact date and the age of the protagonist). They're scenes from the past that have direct influence on what's happening in the present and...I have them already written :D I'll wait to see what she says about it though, but I'm tipping towards the 'use them' side of the fence. Before that class I hadn't even thought to include them in the novel.

Sooo starting this week I'm going to give myself a daily word count. I'm thinking of starting off with 1k per day, and moving up to 2k or more depending on how well I do. I want to wait for my first 'assignment' to come back with comments (she wanted the first line of our novels) but I know that's a cop out, and I can always rewrite, so I will just write.

So that's where I'm at :) Today I had an outing of a lecture at the college, dealing with social media types and their application in the college environment (Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Alexa, etc.). It was quite interesting and I had a great time learning stuff I didn't know before :D Buuut now I gotta get to work on writing :P I'm gonna aim for 1k or 5 pages, whichever ends the thought first ^_^

Behind! Always behind!