It’s five am. I’m awake and I’m the happiest I’d been in a long time, maybe even a year. I wrote over a thousand words yesterday! And not just any words, the first chapter of that next novel that has been stuck in my head for so long. I’m still marveling at how easy it was to do, especially considering that I have had trouble writing anything for almost two years, even regular blog posts. How did I do it, you ask?

I simply decided that I don’t HAVE to write a book. The solitary year it would take me is just too much of a mountain, a burden, a crippling task. First I thought I will just write short stories, maybe see if I get enough of them to compile into something worthy of publication. But the story I wanted to write doesn’t easily fit into a short format, it needs time to unwrap its many layers. So I once again decided to try and publish it as an online serial.

So this is what I’m going to do. I will publish it on this blog, chapter by chapter, as it comes to me, without worrying too much about copy editing and comma polishing. It would be a challenge in itself, because it’s scary for me to show something I’ve written before I’ve had a chance at mulling it over for a long time or getting a native speaker/editor to fix the grammar and spelling. I just hope that the flipside will be that I won’t lose the momentum I gathered yesterday. After all, that’s how I wrote my first novel – it was a joke email to my sister, and had she not laughed and demanded more, it might have just stayed an email, forgotten in the sediment of thousands of other jokes I wrote and said to her. So if this serial post thing works out and I finish it, I still have a chance to turn it into a published book. After all, that’s how a few bestsellers started – The Marshian and if I’m not mistaken, The Twilight. Yes, traditional publishers would probably frown on this, but then publishers have ignored my many attempts at publishing Isa Maxwell series, so what’s new?

I decided that I won’t give up painting either and will weave into my new method – each post will have a new or updated painting to go with it. I have almost finished painting one of the characters and about to start on another one, my very first male portrait.

So that’s the plan. I will post the first chapter in a couple of days. Right now I will get back to writing and who knows, I could write another thousand words before my actual day begins.

Wish me luck!