This is my biggest challenge. As a journalist, a writer of facts, I know how I'm going to approach a story, and I know pretty much what the structure will look like, before I've even written a word. Novel-writing is not the same.
In fact, it's quite the opposite.
As a novelist, I have to show up at that blank page not knowing where my story is going. I have a basic idea that I'm playing with, but that's pretty much it. I don't know the ending of my story, I don't know the middle, I don't know the scenes. And to this left-brained writer, it's such a challenge, the not-knowing.
In my first attempt at a novel, I pretty much outlined every chapter. I divided the total word count (100,000), by the number of chapters I'd have, and then tried to see how many scenes would make a chapter, and how long each scene should be.
Yeah, that went to the trash pretty soon.
The next idea, the idea I'm working with now, is something I've thought about before, but something I haven't really explored in words. Sure, I've written a paragraph here, a paragraph there, I told the boyfriend of the premise, and I've joked about how I long to write fiction. But the act itself is pretty tough. It's scary. It's personal.
And I know personal. I've written essays chronicling my life, my choices, and had good and bad feedback for it, so I'm not completely new to the personal space. My journalist alter ego blogs, too. But this is different. For one, it's a whole book. And two, it's not my life we're talking about, it's my imagination.
For once, I have complete control over what I write. That's what's scary I suppose.
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