Rough Beginnings

Hello, my currently nonexistent audience. I am still very much alive and writing. College is winding down for the semester, which means more tests and due dates, which furthermore means less free time. As they say, " the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray." This is because of laziness and poor time management.

So, anyway, my novel.

Thus far I have said little (and by little I mean nothing at all) about my novel, so let me give you the boiled down plot. This is a one-sentence summary you would find if The Odd Season were to make it onto The New York Times Best Seller list:

A teenage boy living in foster care teams up with a cranky but good-hearted neighborhood witch to defeat a shadowy supernatural force.

If that sentence did not make you roll your eyes or close the window, then congratulations: you are my intended audience. Hopefully.

However, I am a bit leery about letting that summary represent my story. Yes, most stories can be simplified into "an adjective noun verbs an adjective noun." But that's just plot, an insignificant and frankly overrated part of the the story– the physical motions with no regard to character. And character is what drives a story, what makes us turn page after page, and what makes us return to our old favorites.

I can attest to The Odd Season having great characters. I, of all people, know this best– they've been living in my head for years now, their voices ringing between my ears, and I can't seem to get them out.

Except there is one way to get them out, and that's kicking and screaming onto the page where they belong.

(Now watch carefully as I perform a trephination on my imagination.)

Current word count: 4,743 (A whopping 1,878 gain since the last post.)

A Mission Statement of Sorts

     As of today, March 1st, 2011, my first novel The Odd Season is at 2,865 words. The average novel, around 240-300 pages, contains roughly 60,000-70,000+ words. That number range will be my goal. Which means that I am almost at 1/20ths or 5% of the way to completion.

     I will refrain from saying that I have a long journey ahead of me. That would feel akin to standing at the base of a mountain, looking up in scrutiny, and remarking aloud that "Wow, I still have quite some distance to go."

     Well, no shit, there's still a mountain to climb.

     So what I propose is that this blog will be my travelogue. Here I will talk about anything and everything that pops into my mind as I write my novel – hopefully most of it will be pertinent to the creative process. Perhaps this will come in the form of an anecdote, insight into how I write, a photograph, or a bit of information that I found interesting while doing research. I will also document my progress with each entry, telling you how many words or pages I have gained.

     Then every other weekend I hope to put up a short story, as a treat.

     I feel that I also owe you, the dear readers, a brief introduction. My name is Neal Hallenbeck. I am 20 years old and I live in Toledo, Ohio. I attend Adrian College in Michigan, where I major in writing. I hope to one day become an author, because I can't imagine being anything else.