Scrapped and Started

The story I started recently was going quite well - although I felt a strange conviction that what I was writing was a bad idea, and so I am sorry to say I have scrapped that idea. I always keep my attempts at writing, and I now read over what I wrote fondly, but refuse to continue.

Meanwhile, I have been musing over the subjects of abortion and what happens to babies that die and where life really begins and all that. I have had the inspiration to write about someone who knows their unborn baby cannot survive, and the process they go through of deciding what to do and how to react. A more morbid storyline than what I usually write about, and I have no idea if it will work at all. Generally I can tell if a story is going to work by the time I have written only a page or two of it, and seeing if the characters are easily usable, so I shall see if this works.

Generally when I start a story I begin by mapping out the characters. I flip through baby-name books to get some ideas, and then draw rough pictures of the main characters and write up some notes on them. Then I might right down a few ideas for where the story is going to go, and then I get started pretty quickly on the first part of the story to see if it'll work.

What attracts me to this new story is that for the first time - ever, I think - I have come up with a storyline that is not based on any other book or movie!!! And I really have no idea what is gonna happen in it...

Life is pretty slow at the moment. A lot of reading, as I am trying to finish my 1000 page Obernewtyn #5 book I've been reading for a year and a bit. After five books in a series of torment, it's finally getting interesting! I knew 21 years of writing would eventually pay off for the writer.

Competition

Hey, I haven't been on my blog for a while now. I have just entered "The Woven Story" which I completed earlier this year in the Somerset National Novella Writing Competition.

I am aiming to get at least shortlisted. About 3 people from NSW/ACT will be shortlisted, and the state winner from there will be up against the other state winners from Australia. I imagine I am up against some heavy competition, but I believe I have a fair chance of being shortlisted as only about 80 people compete, my friend tells me. But she might not be right... not sure.

Anyway, it would be so very awesome and life-changing if I actually won this........ ahem.

I started this story about a month ago that i thought would be a brilliant idea, but now im already sick of it after one chapter, but I hate ditching stories. I hate it. I have another idea for a story, which is awesome in my head, but the more awesome these things are in my head, the worse they are on paper. So i don't know if i wanna write it... anyway, I've been feeling a little agitated recently that I haven't had enough experience to really be writing stories at all. What I am basing almost all my material on is other books and movies, which is very unreliable for real life.

That's my main strong point in my Novella in the competition, I think though. It's one of the first things I have written about with more content based on what I have experienced, than fantasy stuff ripped off from other works. There is some fantasy at the end, but a lot of it sounds just like what I am like, which can be a little embarassing when people read my stuff, cause it's like this large insite into my brain. I never really thought about how much a book is the author's inner thoughts until I have been writing for myself now...