Forcing myself to forge ahead

I've been posting a lot of short fiction onto my blog recently. This is partly to give it a wider audience, but mostly to "use it up" so I am forced to write more. I have a number of ideas for new short stories but as ever find it difficult to get started. Perhaps this will give me the incentive to do so.

In the meantime work on the novel continues apace despite the official end of the writing course. I am if anything more enthusiastic about finishing it now, not least because I'm very keen to find out what happens in the end. I do already have a vague shape for the overall plot, but am one of those writers who discovers the story as they're going along rather than planning it all with military precision and post-it notes.

I'm currently working on filling in the gaps so I at least have a coherent completed first half. I'll then have to resist going back and changing everything and just strike out for the end. After that I can go back and change things, although when I get sudden ideas for additions I am tempted to put them in whilst I remember.

Last night my central character Genie actually appeared in a dream I was having. Sadly it was no help with the novel as she was stuck in the Big Brother house with a family of serial killers. I can't work out how to shoehorn that in.

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