write a novel

i’m having a smashing time doing research for this! really getting into it :-)

I found out this morning from mejaka about the National Novel Writing Month in November. I have decided to go for this and write a draft novel in the month of November. Given my tendencies towards perfectionism and putting things off i think having this deadline will help and also knowing that there are thousands of others doing the same thing will help i think. iv been enjoying starting my research of my chosen setting and I will continue with this in the weeks leading up to the NaNoWriMo! Is anyone else out there planning to do this?
http://www.nanowrimo.org/

iv been toying with a particular idea for about four years now. iv decided to do some research into the chosen setting of the novel as i feel i need a greater understanding of what it is like to live there. just ordered three biographical books as a starting point. this is a long term goal and i think that immersing myself in the details of people’s lives will be key.

this is something i’d like to do at some point in my life. if you’d have asked me four years ago i might have told you that i wanted to be a novelist. since then the realities have gradually got to me. i had some small success with a short story that i wrote as it won a national competition and this really got my hopes up.

as a result of this i got published and was approached by a literary agent in london who encouraged me to use my story as the beginning of a novel and to get on with writing it straight away. at the time i was hopeful, but since that one success iv never even been able to finish a story let alone a novel. the truth is, i dont know if iv actually got what it takes to write a novel, maybe you just have it or you dont?

i dont read enough nowadays. every time i read i find myself analysing the novel from a writer’s perspective, trying to look for techniques, its kind of taken the fun out of it all.

despite these failures a part of me feels like i need to write this novel. i want to. just writing this down makes me want to try again. :-)