Accepting a New Challenge

I took a step of faith this morning. I registered for the October incarnation of the American Christian Fiction Writers’ NovelTrack.

Last year, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the first time ever. The goals for that annual event are to start with nothing on November 1 and write a complete, 175-page, 50,000 word novel by the end of the day November 30. It was a great challenge to participate the first time and a huge thrill to meet the challenge.

NovelTrack is similar in that it offers writers an opportunity to set writing goals, share them with other participants, and be accountable to their fellows. The primary difference is that writers can work on brand new material, rewrites, or finish existing manuscripts. Writers can also set their own word count goals.

The biggest factor for me is that NovelTrack is hosted by the ACFW and participants will all be fellow members, some of whose work I’ve already become familiar with through crit groups and online conversations.

Deciding to do this event wasn’t the step of faith.

The step of faith is that the event begins at 12:01 a.m., October 1, 2010 (this Friday!), and I have no idea what story I’ll be working on. The obvious choice is Anderson Baxter, which I’ve been designing for several weeks. That design doesn’t feel right, though, and I’m reluctant to take off writing until the snags are all worked out of it.

There are other stories taking up thought-space. Some of them have had scenes written as part of the daily fiction writing exercises, some have only had notes made on them, and others are somewhere in between.

The Saving Grace rewrite is also a possibility, but if I do anything with that, it’s almost certain to be a start-from-scratch-seat-of-the-pants sort of deal.

There is a certain appeal to that thought. That’s how I did NaNoWriMo last year. I had a week to ponder and plan between the time the idea came to mind and the time NaNoWriMo began.

For the time being, the only thing I know for sure are my goals for October:

  • 2,000 words per day every day but Sunday
  • Write a minimum of 52,000 words in October

All I have to do is figure out what I’ll be working on!

Written by

I've been an avid looker-at of books since I was old enough to sit on Mom's lap and listen to the stories she read. Once I learned to read and discovered the school library, I read every horse story I could find. I must have read Walter Farley's Black Stallion series a dozen times during grade school. I still enjoy reading the adventures of the Black Stallion and Flame and all the rest. But Marguerite Henry, C. W. Anderson, Thomas Hinkle and anyone else who wrote a story about a horse was also on my to-read list. I couldn't get enough of them. Then I found Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and discovered another world; the world of mysteries! More recently Dick Francis has combined my love of horse stories with my love of mysteries with his series of books. Frank E. Peretti, Joel C. Rosenberg and other writers now fire my writing and story telling imagination. I am, as yet, unpublished. I write every day, maintain painting and writing blogs, painting journals, writing journals and a number of other writing endeavors. Along with other members of my church family, I've written devotions for Advent and Lenten devotional booklets. For a time, I wrote a monthly column for the Newton Kansan newspaper. I still enjoy a good horse story but I also enjoy a good mystery or cozy mystery, suspense and a little bit of action here and there, as well as literary works. I hope, Lord willing, to try my hand at each of those genres, but if you pressed me to tell you what my stories are about, I'm most likely to tell you they're usually a mix of political thriller and Old Testament prophecy. The Old Testament prophets had a lot to say to the people of their day. They have a lot to say to us, too. It's impossible to follow the news and read Old Testament prophecies and not make connections. Once a connection is made, a story is likely to take shape. The never ending wellspring of ideas is often delightful, frequently overwhelming and sometimes frightening. After all, I know what followed the prophecies of the Old Testament prophecies. Can we be far behind...?

Visit my Website

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>