Giving Thanks

It's almost Thanksgiving in the United States. It's a time of year set aside for us to count our blessings, secular or non: blessings can also be construed as Good Things That Have Happened In your Life, so it doesn't need a religious affiliation. ;-) (Hey, only a small number of my friends worship the God they associate with blessings while others respect The Goddess and all Her works [personally, I think Deity is a commitee, bt that's my problem, not yours]).

I think you should be thankful this year that you have decided to Take The Plunge.

The first decision, you promised yourself that you would write a book. This is your first step towards writing it. You no doubt have a general idea in mind. If not, I suggest that you not worry about it. You will find that the longer you write the story, the more clear the story will become, the more real that it will become to you.

TLGM, the book I am working on for NaNoWriMo, changed its nature when I started writing it. The first stage in this transformation was my decision to use a single character viewpoint for my main character. It's the initialized form for The Last Great Mage. It does not refer to a mage within the book, though evidence suggests that it might well have to do with one of his peers who, as I am writing, seems to be the antagonist as the story progresses.

See? These are thoughts that might be nebulous at the beginning but will clarify themselves towards the end.

I didn't think it would be any more but a single volume but it looks like there will have to be at least two books, perhaps three. The way the antagonist is developing, I don't see them getting rid of him quite so easily.

Anyway, The Last Great Mage refers to a character who was alive five hundred years before the beginning of my NaNoWriMo novel. This did not become clear to me until today, when I'm well over 40k words into the story. The antagonist is after a book that The Last Great Mage wrote which contains a spell which could well bring about the destruction of their society, their countries and their entire world.

The point is, when you begin to write it's okay not to know where everything goes since you're just moving into the house. The thousand words per week will give you a chance to move in, settle in, figure out where everything bleongs and then invite some friends over for tea or a housewarming. It's a rather cosy ordeal. *grin*

And You Are Not Alone. That's the point of this group, since as the aphorism goes "misery loves company".






Regards,
Elizabeth Anne Ensley
Thursday 18 November 2004.