Writing a Novel: The Pain of the Beginning

I have been twisting and turning in my sleep.

Nightmares and dreams, needs and desires, course their way through my bloodstream as my brain continues to work out the possible from the impossible.

How can I turn this around?                                   Where do I find a path that is right for me?

In the depths of despair you have an option to turn to others for guidance; it is then that you can discuss a certain path that you may wish to take. My case is simple: I am in a job that I dislike; I have ambitions to turn to my passion, which is writing and acting; I feel like I am hitting a brick wall.

So what is the answer? Keep your head in the sand; accept that there is no more to life than getting up at 7am, heading to an office where you are not enjoying yourself, coming home mentally and physically exhausted as if you have been in a boxing match, eating and drinking and then turning in only to repeat the exercise the following day?

Or do you stand, against every fibre that is burning in your body, and say to yourself no, this time it will be different?

That is the first hurdle that I have to leap when it comes to writing anything. There are three questions: what is the point anyway? Will I finish it? and What the hell am I going to do with it?

There are no answers, mainly because you will not know anything until you have a finished product, but that is removing the fundamental thing that is vital to the writing process:

Enjoying the journey.

It is within this backdrop of thought that I was struck by an idea for an adventure. Now there are many adventures in my drawer that have been started and not finished, but there are some that have made it into the outside world, notably Pirates Vs Fairies. This current idea has legs, in part because it is about a species that I seem to enjoy writing about, Fairies.

It is only when the world is completely silent that you can hear a plane through a window. Imagining it, floating on a cloud cushion thirty thousand feet away, is as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. Yet, when the silence is broken, thirty thousand feet may as well be thirty thousand miles.

Flies tend to avoid approaching fairies, but this instance was different. It was not every day that a fairy would be found dead in his apartment, let alone a decomposing corpse stripped of all its magical qualities. The only trouble was that there was a reason flies and fairies did not mix, and this unfortunate insect, upon reaching out to feed on the blood of the victim, internally combusted with immediate effect.

The room now fell into total silence.

I was immediately enthusiastic about an article I read on the Folklore Thursday website which explained that fairies were the offspring from randy angels having it away with human women. This to me was very interesting. What if this was true, and if they are still walking among us? Not flying around gardens like little insects, but fully grown and indistinguishable from human beings with the exception that they have an insight into another realm, what we would consider to be heaven. They are the inbetweeners, caught between being celestial and human. How would that make them feel, to be unaccepted on both sides of your lineage?

So the above is the beginning of a novel. A murder mystery involving fairies, humans and angels.

My progress will be posted here in part, and if there is anyone out there who would wish to offer me advice or show an interest in seeing the full product, then here is where you will find me.

It is the writing process as much as the storytelling that fascinates me, there will be lows, and I aim to blog those horrible days where nothing comes but a blank page or a load of nonsense. But there will also be days where you feel as if you cannot stop, that the characters are moving along of their own devices. That is when you know you have something magical happening, and that is a very strong reason for writers to write.

Writing is a drug: it leaves you feeling cold and needy at times but euphoric as well. In the main, when you have a brain that is constantly on the look-out for something or someone to be inspired by, it gives your thoughts a purpose, writing is a purpose, and no matter what happens to the final product, it is a wonderfully uplifting thing to do.

Zac Thraves is a writer, actor and storyteller and would love to be invited to perform a reading at your local establishment. Please email zacharystories@hotmail.com.