Well, it’s been a while. I had intended to write weekly blogs but as you can see, that didn’t turn out the way I had intended. I’ve had a busy few weeks with the Faber Kickstart Your Novel Course. We had sessions on setting, tense, point of view, structure and writing a synopsis. I’ve found all of sessions incredibly useful, but the session on structure was particularly useful. Everybody in the course was tasked with reading the same novel (Attica Locke – Heaven, My Home for those interested) and we had to dissect the structure of the book. It was a really interesting exercise and has directly helped me structure my novel idea. I’m sure the structure will change as my novel develops, but I definitely have a better idea of the “rising action” and “obstacles” in my novel now.

The course comes to an end next week. At the moment we have been given two weeks to write the opening pages of our novel (1,500 – 2,000) words for feedback from the rest of our peers. Luckily, I’ve already written part of my novel. I had started working on my novel idea before the course. I think before the course I was on 5k words. I’ve added to that throughout the course and I’ve currently got 11,113 words. I’ve reworked the beginning and think it should be ready to post. I’m both excited and scared to see what other people think. I know there are some people on my course who are starting their novel writing from scratch over these two weeks – I feel for them!

Once the course ends, I’m hoping to reapply to the online 8 month “Writing a Novel” course. I originally applied before the “Kickstart Your Novel” course but was unsuccessful. I now understand why I was unsuccessful and believe I am now in a much better place to make an application and continue serious work on my novel. Fingers crossed.

If I am successful, the course doesn’t start until 20th January, so I’ll have almost two months between the courses. In an ideal world, I’d like to have gotten to 20k words before the course starts, but we shall see…