Before I found National Novel Writing Month (NaN0), my books were more exercises in writing about goats and nature. Writing that first novel was not even an idea. Fiction was something I read, not wrote.
However, I’d finished “Goat Games” and “Exploring the Ozark Hills” and wanted a new writing project. I liked writing and wanted to do more of it.
False Starts
The NaNo challenge was to write 50,000 words in 3o days. That’s almost 2,000 words a day, a mind boggling number to me then. But I like challenges.
The problem was not having an idea for writing that first novel. Somehow I came up with one.
Disaster Looming
That plot idea was not workable. It was a disaster waiting for me to fall into it. I did just that.
There was no novel draft that November. However, I was hooked. That novel was left moldering on my computer as I came up with a new idea.
It was trite. City girl moves to the country. Done and done well so many times, the idea was a waste of time.
Marine Private First Class Brandon Smith
Everything changed with a phone call from my mother. My nephew, my brother’s only child, had been killed in Iraq.
Brandon was 19. He joined the Marines because he was looking for a way to get his life on track. His love was working on engines and he was supposed to do that. Except he was sent to Iraq.
Grief has so many forms. It’s different for every person. Perhaps that is why it shows up in so many novels.
“Broken Promises”
My brother didn’t really accept Brandon’s death for a year. For my mother, it was devastating. He was the only grandchild she really had time with and he was killed on her eightieth birthday.
City girl moves to the country. Now Hazel had a reason to move. She had a conflict to resolve.
And I found writing that first novel that some novels write themselves even as they tear you apart inside.
