Change of Plans

Summer's here, school's done (and how!), and I'm back at work. All of those goals I discussed in my last blog are moot, because another goal has taken over. Which is? Well, I'm getting around to that, give me a minute. Ok. A minute has passed (and wouldn't you like to know if it actually was a minute or if I was just writing off the top of my head?) and I'm ready to tell you. Maybe. Ok, yes I am.

I'm finishing up the children's novel, and I really am almost finished. I'm aiming to be finished with the first draft sometime next week. Amazing, I know, right? The idea came to me in a flash of genius right after I woke up sometime late last week, and I started six days ago, even before I was finished with exams. Shows how much I cared about those wastes of time. BTW, the best flashes of genius come right after I wake up, I don't know why.

Anyway, I had gotten up to the halfway point last year before I stopped the book, and that was in late August, right before I went back to school. I haven't picked it up since, but I'm going on momentum, and I've written quite a bit in it since I started writing it again. Of course some things will have to be changed, but the first draft is the hardest thing to complete, and that's about seventy-five percent finished.

I've started reading other children's books too, and plan on analyzing them for stylistic elements. I'm reading Artemis Fowl at the moment, since it's the only other book I know of in recent memory that deals with the same subject (Fairies) as my book. Even though it deals with the same subject, I plan on approaching it from a completely different angle, using different style and the like. I'm glad I started reading it, though, because one of my fairies had the same name as one of Colfer's fairies. After that scary moment, I realized this was going to give me a better opportunity to make a new fairy culture--go more in depth, find new ways to name fairies, that sort of thing.

After Artemis Fowl, I'm going to read Harry Potter 1 again to analyze that. Even though that book is a lot different, I think its style is what I'm going for. We'll find out, won't we? And of course, I opted not to take the children's lit class at school next semester, so I'm going to be shooting in the dark. But this will be novel number two, and that is something to be proud of, even if I don't technically know what I'm doing.