I normally write these articles a few weeks in advance, that way, if I get caught up with other stuff, this is one thing I don’t need to worry about, but right now I am eyebrow deep into writing (and re-writing) my next book and today I suddenly realised I needed to pull back from my book and write next week’s post. 

It’s my first attempt at a fantasy novel and I am discovering how easy it is to get so totally lost in the the growing story that I sometimes I can lose an entire day!

Writing a novel is very different to writing a blog or a short story.  For one thing, you don’t have to worry too much about dialogue, but a novel where the characters never talk, would probably go down like a lead balloon – and I have discovered that writing dialogue is not my best point.  I am, therefore, following a rapid learning curve and finding that there are some rules that just seem really silly to me. 

I am told, for example, that when a character talks it is always in the present tense; but descriptive text is in the past tense because you, the author, is telling of something that has happened!!!   And then, just to complicate things, my personal punctuation rules are not really acceptable because, well, they have uniquely developed from about 60 years of writing how I speak, and ignoring every rule in the book other than a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop!  Everything else is a result of where I stop to take a breath when I read out loud! 

I also start sentences with But and And and So because that is my syntax and, to my mind, it makes text seem less stilted and more personal: from me, the writer, to you the reader as if we are conversing. 

But this storyline is demanding that I write it, and don’t stop for anything so arcane as punctuation. For now that, and grammar, can take a holiday because, whilst I write the story there are no rules, and dialogue will happen as is needed.  Yes, there will be some major editing work once the story is finished, but that’s to be expected of any book being written. 

Right now though, I am writing the soul of this book and it is amazing.  Characters are developing and growing and are becoming so real it’s almost as if they are sharing my headspace with me.  With aphantasia, I can’t visualise the characters or the landscape, but I am feeling them in every cell of my body. 

This is fantasy, but it is also so very real.  A world to lose yourself into.  And it is my story.