Strayhaven

I am working on a novel idea whose working title is Strayhaven. It's an earldom in a fictional country called Comhar, which uses elements of Irish culture for its setting. I'm starting the world-building and plotting now. It is my hope to have enough of the pre-writing work done by November 1 that I can successfully complete this as my NaNoWriMo novel for this year.

I haven't posted to this journal in a while because I hit a creative dry spell and was doing nothing but RPG (role-playing game) writing.  A couple of weeks ago, however, I found out about a story-writing app called Zathom that is in development.  Once the app is rolled out, it will be a platform on which users can write flash fiction stories of either 55 or 415 words in length, using certain words chosen by the Zathom organizers.  For their roll-out, the designers were soliciting a whole slew of 55-word stories.  So I submitted about 24.  I will let you know if I sell any of them.  

The Zathom work has been somewhat of a jump-start for me.  it convinced me that I could still write and that I could still come up with interesting ideas.  I really needed that emotional shot in the arm.

Also helpful was reading an excellent book on writing by Marshall Dotson, called The Story Structure Secret:  Actions and Goals.  This is the kind of information I have been needing all of my writing life.  It has been of more help to me than even Donald J. Maas' Writing the Breakout Novel and James Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel.  It is because of Dotson's book that I feel able to work on Strayhaven and to feel that it has more than a snowball's chance in Hell of becoming a good story.  Dotson's book is giving me a very clear road map and is allowing me to see that I will be able to finish what I start.  That in itself is a great relief.