16 May 2015

My Three Hundred and One WIPs (or close enough!)


Last week, I was lucky enough to be part of a Google Hangout with the incredibly lovely Millicent, Mandi and Kathleen. The four of us plus a few others are part of creative group that works to support and motivate one another, and the Hangout was helping us set that up. There will be some exciting stuff happening with this later on that I can’t wait to share with you all.

Anyway, the Hangout wasn’t all business. We had some laughs about things, and eventually we started talking about the books we were writing. So yes, I know some sneaky facts about Millicent’s upcoming book. Millie bought up this great point about sharing creative work and how there’s always that fear of plagiarism nowadays. Millie’s comment started me thinking…

I don’t share a lot about my novels, not because I’m overly worried about someone plagiarising them but more because I’m not entirely sure as to where most of them are going. I thought I would talk about that in this post today, just in case any of you are in the same position or if you have any tips.

Firstly, my main novel, the one I have talked about on here is Tied Together. My protagonist, Coralie, has been with me since I was eleven or twelve (I’m almost twenty) so this story has been floating around for a while. I’m currently 51,050 words into this — it’s kind of all over the place. I have the first fifteen chapters written in full and then after that I have some random scenes written here and there. I’ve been holding back on this a bit because the story is set in Denmark and I know I’ll be able to write it even better when I’m living there. I am incredibly good at pinning things about this though!


Secondly, I have the novel affectionately titled, Nellie, for the main character. This will eventually be a dystopian/alternate reality trilogy. It’s kind of a hard plot to describe, but it’s set in Budapest (yes, I have a thing for Europe). Nellie is a seriously kickass character and it’s a lot darker than Tied Together is. I’ve written about 3,000 of this so far and again, my Pinterest is boss.


I also have 2,000 words of a dark psychological thriller called This Bitter Dark. This one is set in England and tells the story of a girl an incredibly selective boarding school and a dark, manipulative relationship between a girl named Megan and a boy named Logan. I don’t know a lot about this yet, but I’ve been working on the Pinterest thing.

Another one I’ve got is currently called Arden, because I like to name things after my main character until I come up with a title. This is a crime/mystery novel set in New York that I started for NaNo a few years ago. At the time, Chami really liked it despite the fact I only wrote about 2,000 words of this too. This one isn’t really YA, but I don’t know that I could label it Adult or New Adult (the characters are in that age group) either… I don’t really know enough about it yet. Now that I've thought about it, I'm seriously considering making this New Adult.



I’ve got another two that don’t even have plots yet, but they Pinterest boards! Firstly, I have one that’s just been labelled as ‘1940s novel’. I know the very basics of this — Melbourne, 1940s, Polish immigrant, orphanage, love story. I couldn’t tell you how those elements fit together yet. The other one is actually based on a song, and it’s just called ‘Celtic Retelling’ at the moment but it’s based on Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac (my dad’s favourite band and a new favourite of mine). I love Wales so I feel like this is necessary… eventually.

So that’s what I’ve got at the moment. I’ve been terrible with writing recently but I’ve been slowly getting back into it. Anyway, I’d like to know any thoughts or opinions you might have or if you’d like to be critique or accountability partners (I seriously need these).


Tell me about your writing below!

Comments (7)

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I'd love to be a critique partner, I have a few WIPs myself so we could exchange snippets every now and then!
1 reply · active 519 weeks ago
Awesome Inge!! Email me and we can work something out :3
WHOA THIS IS AWESOME. I love that your ideas are set in different places. Seeing books that are set outside the US are always interesting for me because I'm sick of reading about the US. Sadly, worldbuilding for me, is NOT a strength and mine is set in downtown toronto because it's familiar to me (: Mine is really strange in terms of genre, I'm not sure what it is, exactly. It's LIKE fantasy but I lack the world building to make it high fantasy and it's got action/humor in it too. So maybe magical realism or urban fantasy? I have no idea LOLOL

I love that you're bursting with ideas because I'm actually the opposite >.< All the luck to you!
1 reply · active 519 weeks ago
Thank you Nova! I've always loved reading books set in unique places so it seemed like a good idea to write them too. Toronto sounds amazing though — I've never read anything or even heard of anything set there! I suck at deciding on genres too, don't worry!

Thanks lovely <3
JUST LETTING YOU KNOW I WOULD READ ANYTHING YOU WRITE. Seriously. Just from your posts I can tell! AND YOU ALREADY HAVE OVER 50K WORDS! Do you know how many words I have? 0. Yes 0. So yes. I want to start writing, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE. Life.

I have faith in you. If you need someone to read your beautiful writing, you know who to call. EVEN A SNIPPET IS OK. I WILL KILL FOR IT
1 reply · active 518 weeks ago
VAL, YOU SERIOUSLY MADE ME TEAR UP!!! About what to write, Pinterest, seriously — best thing for inspiration ever.

I AM GOING TO FIND YOUR E-MAIL...SOMEHOW. AND JUST EMAIL YOU SNIPPETS, SLOWLY.
I can't wait to hear what you, Millicent, & co. have come up with! I've just recently been getting back into writing (currently prepping for Camp NaNo in July) and I love this post! I've been thinking of describing my past stories in this type of format since about April and I think I'll do that now for sure! Love these posts about writing. Please do keep it up :)

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