Titles

The titles have changed.

Now that the original three books are split into three trilogies, I worked out I need 13 titles...

1. - An overall title
2, 3, 4, - a title for each trilogy
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 - a title for each book

I have decided that the first trilogy title will be Motherland.
The three books under this trilogy will be:
- Departure
- Adventure
- Arrival

Not sure about the last one, Arrival.
I've been trying to find titles that fit with each/most of the POV's and the first 2 do...
I haven't planned out each chapter/event for the new POV's in the third book so I'm not decided about the last title.

Really struggling for an overall title!!!
:S
M. x

Yeah, Yeah, I Know...

Okay so I said novel one is finished and just needs editing, right?
Well I've changed my mind. Again. Yeah, yeah, I know; at this rate it looks like the novel will never be finished!

I realised that every POV in the novel needs to start somewhere, develop, and finish somewhere...probably on a cliff-hanger for the next book. So I've now got 33 chapters, not 19. I just needed to add it stories for each individual POV.

I have 5 in the first novel.

- Bastion Gray (just wrote one of his 5 new chapters)
- Henry Barlow
- Malina Goodwin (finished - just needs editing)
- Etillie Longthorn
- Augustus Longthorn

I've planned the new chapters so it shouldn't take long for me to write them...

M. x

Novel One!!!

After taking a look at the size of part one, we realised that in print, it would be about the size of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone!
We have had this idea in our minds for a while but never really elaborated on it because we weren't quite sure that it would work.

The first book was originally going to have 3 parts.

Part One - 9 chapters
Part Two - 12 chapters
Part Three - about 10 chapters.

Now that we have added the many different Points Of View, Part One grew to 19 chapters! Part One added about 5 more characters to the story. Part Two will add 2 more. We realised that in Part One, not that much happens, yet still we managed to add 10 more chapters and still more needs to be added to them.

In Part Two, a lot more happens in each story. Therefore, each POV will need more chapters.
In Part Three, each POV gets even more interesting.
Can you imagine the size of that one book?
If the smallest is the size of the first Harry Potter...that would be a slog to get through and would surely put off many readers, merely because of the size of the book.

We realised with grim expressions.

The only way to fix this was to split the three parts into individual novels.

There were originally going to be 3 novels. It looks like there will be 9 now!

This means that I have written a novel!
I just need to edit it now...

It's really hard to talk about it now, though, because everyone else has heard us talking about them as Part One, Two and Three...and now they're going to be books One, Two and Three. Even Ben and I confuse ourselves when talking about them!
So the next step is book titles.
We need a title for all 3 of the first trilogy.
Yeah, we're going to split them into 3 trilogies.

If we had titles, everything would be a lot easier to understand!
At the moment, we're having to refer to them as "the original part one that is now book one" and it's driving me  - I don't know about Ben - mad.

I really need to think about this and I really don't have the time for novel thinking at the moment!!!
Hmm...
Titles, titles, titles.
They've always been my weak point...
M. x

Part One. Again.

Okay, I know I've said this loads of times but Part One really honestly is very close to being finished! I'm going to see little Benny tomorrow and we'll do a load of work on the last chapter (which is only one A4 page at the moment!) and then Bob's your Uncle! You have 19 chapters for one part!
It used to be 9 chapters!
WOAH!
I'm in a weird mood so I should probably go before my weirdness shows too much on here.
Weird, Weird, Weird.
Read my other blog and you'll discover that I'm moving to Norwich in a week!
From Sussex to East Anglia! What a move! It's is scary. I am scared. But I will be fine.

I'll still be able to write.
I've pretty much (it's kinda complicated) got a job up there but it's commission work so I'm gonna take the weekends off for writing and me time :)
If I don't get enough time to myself, I'll go a bit doolally...

Anywho, I need to sleep now.
Part One should be finished by tomorrow!!

M. x

Returned Traveller!

I got back from my trip around Britain last night! It was AMAZING. I loved it!
I kinda wish I was still out there. Home is nice...for a few hours ahah!

Anyways, I added in loads of chapters to Part One because I now have a lot more Points Of View (POV's).
I think there's about 6-7 now and there are more coming! So part one has gone from 9 chapters to 19!!
I much prefer it, now. My writing has got better and it just makes the story a lot more interesting because the reader is following so many different stories, some more important than others.
I wrote about 5 chapters while travelling - one of the chapters is for the beginning of book 3! I got a bit ahead of myself...but I just had a burst of inspiration!

Sub-Plots

I'm meant to be sleeping right now because I'm getting a very early start (6am!) and going on my month long travels!!! I doubt I'll get a chance to post up on here in the next month so in a flash, here's the latest update:

I was watching Game Of Thrones and I realised that what makes these stories interesting is many, many different POV's (points of view) that somehow intertwine. So I've added in something like...5 or 6 new POV's other than my main character, Malina, just to jazz it up.
So now Part One has gone from 9 chapters to 17 chapters!!!
I've written most of them already (they're pretty short) - I just need to add 2 more, now....
And there you have it!
See you in a month!
M. x

Chapter Five, Part Two

In the last three days, I have edited Chapter Five three times!
I read through it the first time and found so much to add in! I began to edit it then realised I didn't have enough space to do all the edits at once or the mind capacity to think of so many changes at once!
So I wrote them all down, edited it on the computer and printed it out again.
I then edited the edit.
And the same problem occured, yet again.
I printed the new edit and have just been through it again. The scary thing is that each edit has turned the pages completely red with edits!
I am relatively happy with it now - there will only be a few sentences to tweak, now. So I'm going to leave it to the very last edit. It's good enough for me to feel relatively satisfied, now!

While writing, I have discovered the best music to edit to!
Try:

- Jon Boden's A Folk Song A Day - hundreds of folk songs that are all gorgeous!
- Billy Bragg's album "Tooth And Nail." It's brilliant!
- Eric Bogle - especially the song Leaving Nancy.

What music do you listen to when writing/editing?

M. x

P.S. Referencing to an earlier post - I don't know if the magazine is ever going to happen. I don't really have the time, I don't really know how to do it and I don't know how to find out how to do it! It requires a lot of effort and time - both of which I have little of for new projects! It may happen eventually - perhaps when I go to University...

In other news...I'm travelling around Britain for two months...and I'm leaving in 2 weeks!!! Ahhh! I am really excited! The only problem is that I haven't actually booked everything yet...
Okay, I have just done a long bought of editing...maybe I should take a breather and book some more of my trip...x

Research And Inspiration

Today, I sat in a library researching Folk Music in the USA for 3 hours!
From it, I got loads of ideas for the fantasy novel!
I thought of loads of background ideas like myths and legends, songs and poems.
I also got inspiration for how societies should be run which is really helpful for the editing of Part Two.
I also found some wise words I hope to use from a myth I read about Hercules.

And that's another very short post for you!
I haven't been doing much for the fantasy novel recently - I've been completely caught up in the folk world! I'm going to folk workshops, researching into folk histories and I'm thinking of joining a folk club in the local town. I've been a little bit distracted recently...
I've also been very busy so haven't had much time to just sit down and edit/write.
I have a relatively free day tomorrow so will do some editing! :)

M. x