In A Heartbeat

Ah yes, those three words that riddled me throughout the month of November 07. The adventure that was NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month) for the first time ever. It's not that particular experience I want to talk about, though I really did enjoy the challenge of it. What I do want to look at is: Where to from here?

I've got a complete story which is in the process of going through a second writing. I've had my chief editor (!) read over the piece and tell me any thoughts, opinions, changes etc. There are things to fix, I know that, I knew that when I read it in it's complete form for the first time. However, if I do say so myself, its rather brilliant for a first draft. Which is exactly why I'm bringing this up. It's just that, a first draft.

Many years ago, and some of my high school friends will no doubt remember this, I embarked on the journey to become a writer. Back then I merely wanted to publish something and I think right back in the very beginning I wanted it to have something to do with The X-Files. Admittedly I have since grown past that phase of my life to the point where I still love the show, but it's not all I live and breathe. Certainly it's not all I write about now days.

Point being is that back a little while ago, though not back as far as my obsession days, I made a promise to myself that I would have something published by the time I was 30. I'm not doing too bad in the grand scheme of things, I've had a few articles published in local publications, a little bit of fame on fanfiction.net (though obsession related) and I found a new audience in the session participants who visited us at Pax Lodge over two summers. There I re-found my artistic flare to write and began to enjoy the art again.

Thus, I'm talking about In A Heartbeat. When I came up with the idea to write it . . . wait I really should not say that because the original notions for my NaNoWriMo project were for it to contain a character who was pushy called Cassandra and it had to have a lighthouse in it and a scene on an airplane. Yep, that's what I went into 30 days of hardcore writing with. I pulled it off though which is some comfort. However, what I was trying to get at was I didn't think I would produce something that I would like so much, and would work so well, that I would consider using it as a chance to have published. In all honesty, I expected that month of writing to be pretty useless because I really did have no idea as to where I was going with it.

Sitting back now, I know that it did go somewhere and it did work out quite well. In a conversation with a friend from Armenia last night, I realised that I did want to really give this publishing lark a go. Only if I am going to use In A Heartbeat I will most likely have the most success in London as that is where it is mostly based and the main point of the story occurs around the time of the London Underground bombings in the summer of 2005.