Writing

I write more than just a blog. I'm an aspiring novelist.

In the not-so-distant past, I considered writing Christian romance novels set in a fictional town close to St. Cloud, MN. The novels would be a connected series about people who loved horses and who were involved with two stables in town. One would be devoted to Western riding, one to English riding. I started writing them and the realized there were two major problems.
1) I've never been in love myself. Like, yes. Crushes, yes. But love? No.
2) I don't have a 50,000 word story in me.

I still wanted to become a novelist. I went back to an older idea about writing - writing for children. Writing for children is harder than writing for adults. The word choice needs to be based on the age of the target audience. I do have two books on writing for children. The Children's Writer's Word Book lists by grades K-6 what words children should know by each grade. The 2008 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market includes tips, interviews with published authors, alphabetical lists of book publishers, magazine publishers, agents and how to submit work to publishers and agents. Granted, the information is a few years old. Some publishers and agents may have closed shop; others may have changed their submission policies. Up-to-date information can be found easily enough via Google's search engine.

Since I believe children and horses have a special connection (see my blog entry from May 28, 2013), what better subject for my children's novels than children and horses? I'm planing a series set in the same fictional town that would have been the setting for my Christian romance novels. This time, the children will all be students at the Western riding stable. That will make research a little easier for me, since I know more about Western riding than English riding. All but two of the horse magazines I subscribe to focus on Western riding. The other two have features related to both styles of riding.

For the first book in the series, I started writing on May 4th and have been writing every day since then. Recently I've gotten in the habit of stopping writing when I still know what will come next in the story. That way when I come back later in the day or the next day, I won't have to wonder where to start. I'm not worrying about where chapter breaks will come at this point. Once the first draft is done, I'll go back and see where natural breaks should be.

I've decided to try something different with this book. I'm currently writing it in the first person to be sure the book has a single point of view. If the first person doesn't work, it won't be hard to change it to the third person. The first book will start to introduce the children who will be the subjects of the next few books.

The children's books will share more than the fictional setting of the now-scrapped Christian romance novels. The children's faith in Jesus will be woven into the stories, as had been my plan for the characters in the romance novels.

Once the first novel is done - by that I mean all the re-writing and editing has been completed and I've taken into account the comments from  my first reader - I'll join the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Then I'll start looking for an agent. The 15% commission will be more than worth the hassle of trying to sell my book myself.

I've got a plan and I'm going to stick to it, whatever it takes.