Writing is hard work. I wrote my first inspirational historical romance novella in 15 days. It just seemed to flow from my fingers. It also helped that I had no clue how to write a romance and so had no mental constraints as to what to include or exclude in the story.
Now that I’m trying my hand at a longer inspirational historical romance novel and with plenty of research as to the romance genre under my belt (though I don’t wear belts as my stretchy pants have no loops for one), I’m finding it much harder. I followed the 90 Days to Your Novel plan (it’s a book title and is supposed to be underlined but I dog gone it I cannot find the little underline icon). I started following the 90 days to your novel plan last year in July. It is now the end of January and I finally started writing the novel Dec. 31–Happy New Year to me. Writing more is one of my New Years resolutions (though I don’t believe in making New Year’s resolutions but just had to this year because I really do want to write more).
What I’m finding is unlike the novella that just flowed I am having a hard time wracking up 1,000 words a day (thank you Stephen King or was it James Patterson?). Is it because I now have more knowledge as to what the format of a romance novel should be? Yes, yes it is. Specifically I’m having trouble balancing the internal with the external. I have plenty of external but just how many ways can a person gaze at someone else and admire their figure? Or the cut of their jaw or whatever? Ugh!
Also I’m bound by my outline. I’ve deviated some from it to fill in spots around the main points, but when I wrote the novella I didn’t have an outline and just wrote. Now that I have an outline I’m struggling to fill in those gaps in order to stretch the story out to 70,000-90,000 words. So far I just cracked 12,000 today. I love the idea of an outline. I’m wondering if my outline and the story in my head can be told in 90,000 words. What if I run out of words and ideas at 50,000. I think, no, I know fear is behind all of this. So how can I break fear? Keep writing and struggling to get to 1,000 words a day and in 90 days I’ll have a full blown novel…or in 50 days I’ll have a really good start.