67. So you want to write a novel?
If you were at SXSW it might have urged you to set some new objectives for yourself in the following year. It did for me, and you can see them here.
One of my objectives is writing for young people. I've set my sights high, not one novel draft, but two... Gulp.
Here is the concept for the first:
There is a myth of the sleepers that crosscuts different cultures, heroes from a bygone age that wait, sleeping in cave, to awake when the world really needs them. There are multiple versions, this one is about the Knights of the Round Table.
They wake now, restored to youth, striding out from sleep into a confusing, astonishing world. The environment is degraded, terribly from what they remember. There are connections to the idea of the wasteland, the ruined kingdom, in Arthurian legend. The cure for the ruin is the grail, and that's their quest, to find the thing that fix the poisons that have leaked into the world.
But they are young, and as they ever were, ambitious, filled with energy and talent, physically precocious, focused, accustomed to violence. They connect with teenagers in the modern world and there are multiple culture clashes, and disbelief. What would we expect from the Knights of the Round Table if they appeared today? What would they actually be like? What would they want? What would they think was important?
That's the idea. A publishable novel for young people needs to be around 100,000 words long. The goal is to have that done by SXSW2020, which breaks down to around 10,000 words a month.
Wish me luck...
One of my objectives is writing for young people. I've set my sights high, not one novel draft, but two... Gulp.
Here is the concept for the first:
There is a myth of the sleepers that crosscuts different cultures, heroes from a bygone age that wait, sleeping in cave, to awake when the world really needs them. There are multiple versions, this one is about the Knights of the Round Table.
They wake now, restored to youth, striding out from sleep into a confusing, astonishing world. The environment is degraded, terribly from what they remember. There are connections to the idea of the wasteland, the ruined kingdom, in Arthurian legend. The cure for the ruin is the grail, and that's their quest, to find the thing that fix the poisons that have leaked into the world.
But they are young, and as they ever were, ambitious, filled with energy and talent, physically precocious, focused, accustomed to violence. They connect with teenagers in the modern world and there are multiple culture clashes, and disbelief. What would we expect from the Knights of the Round Table if they appeared today? What would they actually be like? What would they want? What would they think was important?
That's the idea. A publishable novel for young people needs to be around 100,000 words long. The goal is to have that done by SXSW2020, which breaks down to around 10,000 words a month.
Wish me luck...
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