Elementals Lives! 

It's been a busy weekend of writing, which is always great fun! Full of ideas, emotions, writes and re-writes, an over active story board fed by an over active imagination - that's the beauty of writing a YA fantasy, anything can happen! And it's been just brilliant.

So, 'Elementals' at this moment 'lives' to the extent of 56,600 words which is obviously short of a full novel but remember this is just the basic story line.

It has presented a few challenges for me which I think is important, every book I've written so far has presented a unique set of challenges: that's the real fun part of writing though, surely!? Well, it is for me. I don't profess to be a 'successful' Author in so much as no one is banging down my door offering huge amounts of cash for writing deals or movie rights. But, I do consider myself successful by the fact that I have two published books, another on the verge of publication and now this one approaching the third quarter of completion. I don't make money as an Author but I swear it is so rewarding in other ways that making money really isn't important to me.

Anyway, one of the challenges in this story was to kill off one of the big characters. Without giving anything away, I don't think that it is possible for all of the major contributors to live happily ever after, so basically someone has to die. 

To kill off said character in a manner that enhances the story and maintains the integrity of the plot is brilliantly challenging, it really works the grey matter. Do it right and it can be as emotional to write as it is to read - well at least that's what I think.

Despite the fact that I had the story boards and the mind map, I still didn't know how this one would end until I actually got there, even right at the very last few paragraphs there were so many options open to me that it could of gone any one of five different ways. It was really exciting to write, it has been heart stopping throughout it's creation, and the sense of achievement is, well, pretty damn rewarding.

Now the task of putting meat on the skeleton starts, building it from a great story to great book - more fun!

I wonder what I would do for fun if I ever ended up writing for a living?! That scares me.

'ELEMENTALS' is next years project to complete; I have to scrape the money together to invest in it's editing, cover etc but really, if it can't happen next year then it will be the year after. When it does get published it will be to the very highest standard, I owe that to anyone that decides to buy it, and I owe it to myself.


Just gotta keep writing!