Writing Progress – Fiction

“Ester and the Boggarts” is running along nicely (fiction, fantasy, child/teen/YA) with my research of settings (what filmics call “location”) working for me in terms of personal motivation and familiarity with place. 

I imagine the story being very filmable – perhaps for a tv series to occupy a slot much earlier than “Game of Thrones”, but on a proper channel – or a film franchise.  The UK-based theme park may follow a little later, so long as it’s in the north.  Book signings will take place in the east coast towns where “Ester” is set – Robin Hood’s Bay, Ravenscar, Whitby, Saltburn and others on the Yorkshire Riviera – together with smuggling-themed treasure hunts for traditional contraband.  No drugs, but lace, tea, Dutch geneva and brandy will be available. 

Such are the writing ambitions of my enthusiasm, untempered by reality or recent failure.  Good, aren’t they?  I mean no arrogance by this.  It is a form of

light-hearted self-motivation that works for me and attracts the Muses.   

Fiction is what I like writing the most. When the Muses are in Harrogate I love the process and I can type almost properly.  A thousand words in under an hour is easily achieved, even with a certain amount of backtracking for corrections.  Without the Greek ladies – who are fickle friends at best  – the words are ground out one at a time and none look right on the screen in any order.  My mood is variable, fickle as the Muses and swings to extremes rather more often than I would choose, so I know I have to get the words down as fast as possible and worry not at all about editing and re-drafting until it is finished.  The “first-draft”, as we writers call it.    

          

Novels suit me more than short stories and it will come as no surprise to those who know me that I have started several magnum opuses, but finished just one.  That France-set nonsense was rejected by several agents, as it deserved to be, but may work as a re-write with a different setting, younger characters, and a more definite origin and back story for the antagonist.  It may become incorporated into “Ester”. 

The other started works all have potential for resurrection and since all have by accident or design included fantasy elements, this appears to be my default writing genre.

The choice makes sense.  I flit from genre to genre for my reading and tend to concentrate on a current chosen favourite at the exclusion of all others.  These have alternated back-and-forth from adolescence until now in no definite order between science-fiction, fantasy (yes, they are separate), historical, crime, war, western (a long time ago, but thanks, Dad), horror and the loose collection under the label of “thriller”.  I have tried to write all bar two of the foregoing and for “Ester” and beyond my writing is likely to be historical crime fantasy.  A new sub-genre of my own. 

At about 12,000 words, Ester is well and truly started and stuff is happening.      

I am not the eponymous Ester, of course.  I am just writing her story.  Ester is an adult and has her own identities on social media.  he will be posting about her life before much longer, but not just yet.