Sun at last!

After months of pouring rain the sun has come out! While it's not been good for my word count, being able to go out for walks and bike rides has improved my mood no end. I was going stir crazy after so much rain.

My word count has actually gone backwards. I'd written three chapters, only to decide that I'd started in the wrong place. I've just finished the new chapter one and I'm much happier with it now. It's just a bit depressing that I've got fewer words down now than I had this time last week.

Progress report and Scrivener

I started work on my first draft this week and so far I've exceeded my target of writing eight hundred words a day. It doesn't sound like much, but if I set out to write, say, fifteen hundred words, I freeze and convince myself I'll never do it. The best way I've found of fighting the fear is by convincing it there's no reason to start whispering to me in the first place. I know I can easily manage eight hundred words and once I've got going I can usually do much more.

My progress has also been helped by the discovery of Scrivener. I downloaded it a while ago, on the recommendation of a writing group friend. However I was in the middle of my previous novel at the time and because it looked complicated I didn't think it was worth the bother of switching over from Word.

I wish I had. It's quite simply the best way I've found of organising my writing. And it's not so complicated. I spent an hour going through the tutorial project and that's all I needed to grasp the basics. Now all my research notes, outlines, character sheets etc are one click away, on the same page that I'm working on. Previously I had to save everything into folders, or bookmark web pages and I was always mislaying things.

There's no way I can talk about all the features, but there are two I've found particularly useful this week. Firstly, it's dead simple to create a template. Eg a blank character sheet or location sheet. I used a tip from Jessica Hart and cribbed her scene sheets. I've found these so useful for planning each scene and it saves me a lot of time in the long run as I don't have to work it out when I write the scene. The second thing is the target setting gadget. I can set a target word count for each scene and as I type, a red line gets longer and gradually turns green as I approach my target. It's a great motivator.

I can't recommend Scrivener highly enough. Give it a try if you haven't already. (I use the Mac version BTW, but a Windows version is also available.)

Plotting

I feel like I should be rubbing my hands, going, "Bwa ha ha ha ha!" at regular intervals when I say that I'm plotting. And in many ways, planning a romance is a bit like being an evil mastermind. I take two lovely characters, ask myself what's the worst possible thing I could do to them, then go ahead and do it. And like an evil mastermind, I have enormous fun watching them suffer :)

Anyway. Progress report: I've got a feel for my hero and heroine now. It took me a long time to get to grips with my hero. Then a single phrase jumped into my head while I was out on a walk and it immediately showed me his internal conflicts and the turning point of the story. I even managed to write it down before I forgot!

I finished the outline today. Now it's time to start the first draft. I'm setting myself a low target of 800 words per day, because I've got other writing projects I'm working on at the same time. With a target of 70 000 words, that brings me to the end of October. It seems like ages away, but I bet it speeds past.

New books and research

My book from Nicola Cornick arrived today - Whisper of Scandal. As it looks like being a wet weekend, I'm going to enjoy curling up in my conservatory to read that. When I'm not chasing around with buckets, trying to catch the drips...

It was a bumper post today. I also got Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal - the first of the books I bought with the Amazon token. It's a fascinating read. It lists fifty British herbs and their uses in medicine. Not only that, but it gives instructions on how and when to harvest, store and create recipes. I've been wanting to get a book on herbal remedies for ages, because several times I've found my characters needing to treat ailments or wounds. I've spent hours searching websites, looking for information on the herbs they would have available. Now I've got all the information I need in one book.

I've been hooked on historical fiction ever since I read my first Rosemary Sutcliffe book, but it's only since I started to write it myself that I fully appreciated how much research is needed. Not so much into the events surrounding the chosen time period - although that's important too - but the everyday details. Like what my characters would eat, what utensils they would use, what they would wear etc. When I was writing the first draft of my post-Roman Britain story I kept stumbling over niggling details that weren't vital to the plot, but were really difficult to find out. I've now read so much about the archaeology of Roman and post-Roman Britain that I wonder if I shouldn't go the whole hog and do an archaeology degree.

Of course, now I've completed that ms I've decided to set my next novel in twelfth-century England and Wales. So I've got to start my research from scratch. It's a good thing I enjoy it!

I'm a winner!

I just heard that I won a contest run by Nicola Cornick. I'm thrilled! I love her books. I get my choice of a book from her backlist and an Amazon voucher. Now I'm off to browse Amazon to decide what to spend it on.

Also I'll admit that I might have spent some time dreaming about being a famous historical romance author and how aspiring writers would be delighted to win my competitions. Better get on with my outline, then :)