Novel Ramblings

They say the number one rule for writing your first novel is not to tell anyone you're writing it and keep it your little secret.

Whelp, blew that one already.

I'm dying to put up some stuff from my story, but at the moment it's nothing but poorly punctuated pre-writing before I begin the first draft. I literally have around 30,000 words of nothing but free writing trying to form my story world and develop the characters. If this thing were a novella it would be long enough for publication already. I'm obsessed. Good thing I didn't sign up for this to be normal.

Anyone ever seen a first draft? Most of them look like they were written by a kinder-gardener.

If they're mine, they're cringe-worthy. I've heard and found it true that you're supposed to just write and iron it all out in the rewrite, which means that going back over it to stomp out typos may be counterproductive. Second guessing yourself is for technical writers. Let your story be alive. I don't want anybody to think that I'm just blowing smoke here, so I'm going to try and get at least something up soon.

I'm beginning to worry that an anthropomorphic dragon wizard might be too crazy of a character for comfort, even though I believe the fantasy genre is in dire need of some spicing up. Translation: there are so many Lord of the Rings clones floating around out there that the literary world just may drown in them.

I also know that a main character who goes insane by the end of the story isn't a new idea, either, but the one thing that sort of makes mine different could be just causes it to be a controversial story. My intent was to follow a child's descent into madness. While I have plenty of other crazy people in my story, I wanted Muriel's transformation into one of these crazy people to be particularly unsettling. People just cringe at the thought of anything unsettling involving children, even though thirteen isn't exactly a childish age. The problem, I guess you could say, is that most people assume it's a much more childish age than it really is. At thirteen you know a lot more than people give you credit for.

I'm also trying to make it look like her 'descent' into adulthood accompanied her descent into madness to the point that some people might take it to mean that I believe it's wrong to grow up.

Nah, not wrong...just impractical :P