Fixing

• Word count: 12,500
• Completed Chapters: 5

It's been a while, but I'm finally back to writing and my dream of becoming a novelist. I'm determined not to be looking back at when I'm in a retirement home somewhere and wondering if I could have made it - I'm going to find out.

The novel I'm writing is about a guy named Jacob (set in the real world[ish]) . It tells the story of how his life falls apart (love, job, home) and how he puts it back together again and is tentatively called ‘Fixing’.

It’s a bit of a departure from my desire to write fantasy, but the story I'd been working on for, on an off, around eight years was more of a collection of ideas and story starts that kind of got drawn together with no idea where I was going, so I'm putting it on the back burner for the moment.

This one is mapped out in terms of plot and while I’m sure it’s going to change and develop I at least have a thumbnail sketch of where it’s headed.

Currently I’m averaging about 2,000 words a day, largely plot movement and dialogue so I’m hoping to have the bones of the story down by early May. Then my first edit will be looking into adding some muscle and flesh, deepening descriptions, then adding the skin and making sure my vision for the characters is being shown. I'm determined to have finished draft one by end of June.

After that I’ll be sending out requests to a few people to act as my test readership and to get some feedback and help with additional edits, the cosmetics. Then hopefully I'll be looking for an Agent in early August.

Right now the major challenges are:

• Trying to suppress my internal editor. He always wants every line to be perfect as I write, but thinking about the staged approach (bones, flesh, skin, cosmetics) seems to be holding him at bay.

• Writing every day. Once I start it feels natural and I really love seeing the story unfold, but those first few minutes staring at the last line I wrote trying to figure out where to go next make it very tempting to take a break.

For those of you on my facebook, apologies that most of this is a repeat of the comments I bloged there - I will be keeping my ongoing blogs at http://writefixing.blogspot.com/.