Goal Met! Boom!

Yesterday I finished the first draft of the second novel I have ever written. It is a literal fiction I might call, A Place to Land.

The story follows Loren throughout a treacherous upbringing. A father who disappeared before she can remember, a mother who reasons with leaving her daughter alone for long periods of time. As a teenager, she’s left to care for her twin brothers and must make the difficult decision to leave them in someone else’s care. She never assumed there was an escape from the walls that closed in on her, sheltering her from normal teenage angst. Though a friend comes to her aide and pulls her from the wreckage, it’s never far behind her.

As an adult, Loren finds herself constantly trying to please others. She never says no and takes on more than she can handle. The fear of being left alone is too deeply rooted and unescapable. Her husband travels so much he’s never home, her mother continues to pop in and out of her life sprouting poison with every visit. It’s time for her to take charge of things. A new job will whisk her away, but she’s unsure how to separate herself from those she’s cared for. How to pull herself out when she’s put herself in the middle of everyone’s existence? They rely on her, they need her.

Loren must struggle with what it means to reach for a goal and weigh the consequences of what stands in her wake.

Or something like that! I hate blurbs, this feels so unnatural to crunch your entire story into a few short sentences. It’s impossible! Anyway, it’s an amazing feeling to be done this first big step. With 104,734 words I am going to need to do a lot of cutting and editing. The theme needs to be more forefront and I tend to forget about characters as the story goes on. That’s what editing is for.

I started this story in November with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I wrote just over 70,000 words that month. The story got put down for a while, longer than I care to admit, but now it’s done and ready to rest before I start editing.

Cheers to me! I’m proud of myself.