Hello there,
I am writing a new novel and I have been enjoying writing it so far. But now that I have to hand in a large section of it to my university class, I am stressed. The novel is lacking strong direction at the moment. I am too close to it. I need to do a lot of work on the main character.
I have read that other authors more experienced than me have this problem. They get to a certain point in the narrative and they don't know where it is going. I guess it is a positive thing. I need to develop more fully what exactly I am trying to achieve in this novel. What do I really want to explore? The problem with this is, I have not had the mind space to fully explore the main character. This is what I need to do. A meeting with my tutor as well will probably help me. That is what I like about university is the fact that you have people to ask questions about your work. This subject has been really good in taking everything more seriously, more post grad students and less undergrad students. Nothing wrong with them but I need to be around other people who are serious about writing.
So, a crisis of plot for me at the moment. But I think these moments are good in writing a novel, cause these issues need to be clarified in your mind otherwise it will fail. It is all necessary for the deepening of the work. A novel takes a long time to write. The problem is you have to survive in the mean time. A novel takes a lot of thinking time. I don't have much spare thinking time. But we just have to fit in where we can, don't we? In this age of instant everything, instant messaging, instant pop corn, instant coffee, a novel is not an instant anything...anything worth reading has taken a fair while to create.
