Our Pam’s first crack at writing a novel

One thousand six hundred and 67 words each day, for 30 days. I started the month thinking it would be quite easy. After all, I spend all day at work writing stories, so I didn’t think I’d have much difficulty.

But once I really started getting down to writing each day I discovered that fiction is a lot different from journalism. You have to rely on your imagination rather than having information fed to you, and it all has to be on the same subject.

I’d written short stories before, but never anything as long as 50,000 words. The most difficult part was trying to think of a plot which would stretch to that length, with plenty of meat in it to keep me interested enough to write.

The target for each day is 1,667 words – nearly three times the length of this feature – but if you miss a day you have to write more, and if you miss several days it can be quite difficult to get back on track.

To start with I really didn’t know who I was writing for – whether it was people my age, teenagers or younger children, and of course the language you use and your storyline changes with your audience. But once I’d decided on my characters - six young faeries called Columbine, Lavender, Poppy, Ginevra, Lily and Persephone - it was fairly obvious that it would be a children’s story, and probably for girls.

It was interesting once the story really got off the ground because there were times when I’d sit down and start writing, and the characters would just start doing things without any prompting from me. Ginevra and Lavender had a row of their own accord, and Lily decided to jump into a lake with rather nasty consequences, which then meant I had to rewrite later scenes.

On those days I never seemed to be short of what to write about, and the story almost seemed to tell itself.

But then there were other days when it was a real struggle, and it was really helpful to know that there were thousands of other people across the world, from Australia to the United States, facing the same problems that I was.

I could log into the National Novel Writing Month website, which included the official word counter and the discussion forums, and get inspiration from fellow NaNo-ers or take part in “word wars”, where you try to write as many words as you can in a set time.

NaNoWriMo started as an internet challenge in 1999 with only a handful of people taking part. Since then it’s grown enormously and last year more than 100,000 people signed up, with more than 15,000 reaching the magic 50,000 word goal.

The idea is that at the end of the month you’ve produced the first draft of a 175-page novel, but now you now have the challenge of editing and making it readable.

Most people do it as a challenge to themselves, some people do it because they have a story all planned out and just need the motivation to tell it, some already published writers take part for fun or as a boost, and several schools take part as a writing project.

Some participants have even managed to sell their NaNoWriMo novels to publishers, and the forums on the website now the month is over are full of advice on getting published, and people wanting their novels critiqued.

For me the next challenge is to finish the story. I still have a few scenes to write, including the final battle scene, and then I’ll start editing it.

After that who knows? But I’d love to try to get it published, and then maybe next year’s NaNoWriMo can be a sequel.

Pam’s first chapter

Part One ~ In which Columbine learns more about dark magic and

Lavender grows some rose bushes

The young dark faerie shook her long black hair back from her pale face, rolled up her sleeves and placed her hands on her hips.

‘It is going to work!’ she told herself fiercely, green eyes glinting as she focussed on the small inoffensive flower in front of her.

Concentrating on controlling the swirling magical forces she could feel around her, she carefully sent out a stream of magic, engulfing the flower, and transforming it… into a hideous thorny mess.

‘What is that?’ asked a cheerful voice behind her. ‘Have you been trying earth magic again, Columbine? You know it’s not going to work.’

The dark faerie stood back as her friend, a pretty forest faerie with striking lavender eyes, waved a hand casually and restored the flower back to its normal shape.

Columbine scowled at Lavender. ‘Why can you do that so easily? The only thing I seem to be able to do like that is make things horrible,’ she frowned.

‘You must be able to do other things too,’ Lavender replied. ‘I’ve seen you turn lights on and off.’

Columbine shook her head, twitching her dark green and black wings agitatedly. ‘No,’ she corrected. ‘I can turn them off, but it’s like my magic just sucks the light out, and when I stop the spell the light comes back. I can’t actually make light.’

She decided it would probably not be wise to share the rest of her experiences with that sort of magic - dark faerie magic - even with her best friend. But the truth was that she got an exciting buzz whenever she used a spell like the light-sucking one she had just described.

She didn’t quite know what it was, but she relished the feeling of power it gave her.

But Lavender wouldn’t understand, she knew. The forest faerie had never really described her type of magic, but Columbine could tell it wasn’t the same as dark magic by the look she had seen flash across her friend’s face a moment ago when she had tried to describe it - she’d been worried.

If only there was another dark faerie to talk things over with, she thought, but there wasn’t another one living in Trimurell – their town – at the moment, and the only other faerie she was really close to was Lavender.

Her other friends had started to drift away when her ‘dark side’ had started to assert itself.

The turning point had really been when they’d been exploring caves on a holiday trip and she’d accidentally extinguished all the lights.

Well, if she was honest with herself it hadn’t been entirely accidental, Columbine secretly admitted. She had half thought it would be funny to see the others’ reactions, and she knew she would have no problems seeing where they were going because of her ability to see in the dark.

But the others hadn’t seen it that way, even Isabella the light faerie, who was usually friends with everyone. She had created new orbs of light to guide them out, but once outside had kept her distance, and Columbine could tell that none of the others wanted to get too close to her either.

Aside from Lavender, that was, who had seemed more intrigued than anything else.

As a result, Columbine had tried her hardest to suppress her dark magic, but even when she tried to do something else, like make the small plant grow, it seemed to take on tinges of darkness.

She emerged from her thoughts to find that Lavender was telling her it was time to go, and she followed her down the path back to the town.

As they left, unseen by the two young faeries, a dark shape came down out of the trees and landed near the little plant which had been the subject of their spells.

The figure, its face hooded by the shadows created by its black velvet cloak, knelt down next to the plant and held out its hand over the top of it. Silver sparks floated out of its palm and surrounded the plant.

As the figure watched the plant shimmered, and then an image almost like a ghost of the plant emerged from the ground next to it. The figure watched as it replayed what had happened to it as it changed from seedling to thorns and back to seedling.

Underneath the hood the figure smiled as it soaked up the magical remnants Columbine’s spell had left behind.

‘Good, very good,’ she murmured.