Beginning My Novel

For the beginning of this past week, nothing happened in the land of Genius Hour. No children books for research were read, nor was any writing begun. The land was barren, the Queen absent, and hope waned. The inhabitants of the land looked for their Queen, and called out to her, but she was battling the evil monsters of homework, and the enemy armies of events in her personal life. As the week neared its end, the light was setting and hope seemed a foolish waste of time, the Queen returned with force and wrote the entire first chapter of her book.

Writing a novel is not easy. I already knew that, from all of the abandoned beginnings that lie in folders on my computer. I usually have no trouble beginning something though, hence why my collection of currently abandoned stories (I hope to come back to each of them some day) is so large. I had assumed that I would have no trouble beginning a new project. I had also assumed that it would be a breeze to read about twenty children's novels. I was doubly wrong. I seem to always forget to figure homework into my plans, and if that wasn't enough of an obstacle, I just had to have things going on in my personal life as well that kept me from doing work on Genius Hour. Part way through the week, when I actually had a moment to spare, I had even tried to begin writing something, but as I wrote, every single word felt wrong on the page, my character had so little depth that she was the shadow from a cardboard cutout, and my plot was as substantial as steam rising from a tea kettle. There was no reason to prevent my hand from crumpling the piece of paper, because the contents were something that I never wanted to see again. The beginning of this wasn't actually such a bad time for me writing wise actually, since I did have a lot of creative energy, but it just directed all of itself to the YA novel that I've been working on for the past four years instead of towards the new project that I was trying to begin.

Friday evening was the moment that everything changed. It was late at night, around the time when I should be going to bed. My eyes were tired, and I had every intention of turning off my laptop and giving in to their heaviness. However, I was scrolling through Tumblr, and any Tumblr user will confirm that one does not simply walk away from Tumblr. So there I was, fighting with myself to go to bed, when suddenly I saw it. A picture of a gate in the middle of a forest.

Fairey-tale. "Forest Gate" [online image]. Retrieved from http://fairey-tale.tumblr.com/post/129743697224. 

The moment I saw this image, I had a story in my head. I wrote as much as I could before sleep claimed me, but the next morning I continued writing and finished the first chapter as well as the beginning of the second chapter. Most of what I have in my head is backstory, but I do have a fuzzy idea of where I want the story itself to go.

As I was writing, I noticed that my writing style was different. My YA novel is written from a first person perspective, and is very action and detail oriented. My children's novel has a third person narrator who drifts among the perspectives of several characters. While it is all action and detail oriented, the tone of the narration is very different. My language is much more simple, and the amount of time I spend describing the action in the moment is much shorter.

I've noticed that my style of writing has been influenced by several writers who I haven't even gotten around to rereading yet. I have adored Angie Sage's writing style ever since I read her first book, and notice elements of her style in my style for this children's book, that have not shown up in my YA writing. I had really wanted to reread Angie Sage's first book, Magyk, hoping that it would help me with my writing and finding my voice, but apparently I didn't need to reread it for it to benefit me. I guess you could say that I've been researching for this Genius Hour project since I began to read, and not for merely two weeks.