Origins ~ Novel Quest

Once upon a time, back in the year 2014, I heard about an interesting challenge for writers: Write a 50,000-word novel in a month. It sounded intriguing, so I thought I'd check it out. It might be fun. It might be an interesting way to challenge myself—to see if I could actually write a novel in a month. I decided to go for it, just to see what would happen. I decided to write a novel in a month, just for a lark.

What happened was my imagination totally LOVED the idea of immersing myself in a novel for 30 days. A few days before the challenge began, I had a book idea in mind, scribbled some notes for it, but it just never felt right. I dutifully sat myself down at my computer on the first day of November and started to type. But the words that appeared on the screen were nothing like what I had scribbled days before. A totally new idea appeared, as if by magic.

The words on the screen were all about writers writing a novel in thirty days. The idea really appealed to my muse. So I did it. I wrote a novel in thirty days about writers writing a novel in thirty days. I love it when my muse takes over and just lets her imagination rip.

NOVEL QUEST is what happened.

It's so interesting how characters can come to life when you're writing them. What's also interesting is how a novel can take on a life of its own and begin it's own journey.

The more I played with the book, and thought about the ideas inside the book, the more it started to change direction and take on a new focus. I originally thought it was mostly about offering a humorous look at writers writing a 50,000-word novel in a month, along with some time morphing and a kahuna quest.

And then the magic happened. I realized it was more about a kahuna quest and finding the magic within, and that writing a 50,000-word novel in a month was part of the magic of the journey.