It's Monday

The start of a new week, and though I had a terrible night of sleep, I'm happy that I made so much progress writing yesterday...even if it was into the night.  Somehow, the baby knew that I needed to catch up with my rest to make up for staying up late writing, and decided to wake up at midnight requesting to watch "The Chipmunks." Oh that kid.

We are into chapter nine as of this morning, and things are going well. Though, I expect some challenges as I transition out of my comfort zone. As is to be expected, a girl living at sea is going to have some experiences aboard a boat...something that I have done rarely, though I pray that my audience never suspects it.

When you read a book, there's inevitably a little bit about the author between the lines of the text. These personal references are sometimes obscure, but they're always there. Reading a writer's work, even if fiction, is equivelent to opening their journal. Those thoughts are unique to the author, their heart is in each line, and reading them is a stained-glass window to their minds, not perfectly clear, but colorful and artistic. Because of this, writing a novel feels just as exposing as publishing a page of my diary, standing on a stage naked. It's out there for people to see, form opinions about, and either enjoy or reject. It's terribly uncomfortable, at least it is for me.

Yet, even for those that don't appreciate the story, think that my writing is subpar, or don't even bother to form an opinion, I know that others will love it. Each opinion is the thought of only one person, even if it feels like the negative ones carry more weight, I have to remind myself that critisism is good, and an opportunity to improve myself. At the end of the day, the joy in telling this story is my own. The more people it entertains, the more people that feel compelled to turn another page, the more it adds to my happiness- but it's not the sole source. I would love for this book to make it on the bookshelves of people I've never met. But, even if this remains a conversation between myself and a small group of my closest friends, it will have been worth it.

A rough draft of chapter one will be posted in the very near future...like maybe today. Feel free to comment the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And it begins...

As I sit here on my 33rd birthday, eating the delicious veggie omelet that my husband made for me, I have decided to start this blog. Not only because writing is fun, but because possibly, it will help me. Perhaps it will help me write though confounding moments, or maybe, in the best of worlds, give me the chance to get feedback from others as the story unfolds.

I've started telling a story I currently call "The Paragon". In it, a girl named West is part of a community that lives at sea in a post-apocolyptic world. When a wayward ship is found, she meets a stranger, the lone survivor amongst a dozen young girls found dead on board. Together, they embark upon a quest to return to land, where life somehow managed to survive. Though the people she finds there are welcoming and kind, a dark underbelly is exposed as she learns more about this strange new world.

A sample rough draft of the first couple of chapters is soon to come...

There is much to do.