How It All Began...

Not all writers deliberately begin with the intention of writing a full length novel. James Patterson (yeah, him again... I like his books a great deal and owe a lot of inspirational credit to him for the first incarnation of the now-redundant prologue) first mentioned the character of Maximum Ride in another novel, and she stuck in his mind to such a degree, that her own series of books were created.

Mine starts with a computer. A barely-working old windows '98 model in a very fetching shade of grey. This was way before flat screens had completely replaced their more boxy predecessors, and as my parents upgraded to something a little less grey and a little more flat, I inherited their old modem. It was practically on its last legs, and the function of connecting to the Internet was just too complex for its ageing components. So what did I have on this computer with the exception of minesweeper, solitaire and the ever so addicting space pinball? I had MS Word 97.

I've always been a writer, even from the very early year five and year six classes in primary school, during which my nine/ten year-old mind was always whirring with plotlines, characters and narrative. I spent many evenings in bed listening to audiobooks, and when the tape had come to the end of its side, I would resist tuning it over and come up with my own works of fiction inside my head; often featuring a specific story that could go on for months and months at a time.

Anyway, back to the book. What I remember most about the beginning of my journey wasn't a deliberate intention of writing 75,000+ words. I was bored, as any teenager who lived in the middle of nowhere would be. Sat behind my trusty grey computer, I'd grown tired of space pinball and absent mindedly opened up Word without a second thought. I just remember thinking, "Okay Jenny, you're bored and you like writing... How about setting yourself a little short piece of descriptive writing task?" And the rest, as they say, is history.

The story somehow seemed to blossom. Names and ideas were cropping up everywhere; soon enough, I was somehow on chapter four, and all of a sudden, I could see paths opening up for the story to go down. It must have been only about twenty pages long, but back then, for a 13/14 year old, that was magic. Then, disaster struck. I can't quite remember what happened to the original first few chapters, and as hard as I try, I can never decide if they were lost when my faithful old computer blue-screened and crashed for a final time, or were simply rewritten to accommodate a less juvenile style of narrative. Whatever happened though, the first few chapters were completely changed, with many of the original ideas replaced: bar possibly the key theme and the so-called 'bad-guys.' All that remains of what was around back then is the prologue, which, funnily enough, I decided to remove altogether from the manuscript.

And so it snowballed. I got bought a laptop, and my writing quota peaked and then subsided again - sometimes I could write 2,000+ words a day for consecutive days, at other times, I went weeks without a single word or thought on the matter. But none of those months really count in the end, as finally... Finally, last December (2011) it was loosely stitched together in one word document for the first time ever. Only at a mere 68,000 words or so, it still needed much work doing to it. But that came later. Finished. I knew then more than ever before that writing was the only real direction that I wanted to take (other than music - but that's a very different dream!).

So there you go. The formation and growth of an idea. It wasn't complete when I started it, and it almost certainly isn't anywhere near completely finished now. But it's there. And before my tone ends up on that ever-so cheesy level of whimsical self-praising, another blog draws to an end. Remember, if you're liking what you're reading, tell people, or get in touch: all comments, promotions or even random greetings are accepted and replied to.

Peace. x