Friday Forays in Fiction: Time for NaNo Thinking Cap

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I've finally settled on which story to work with this year.  It is the first novel in a fantasy trilogy that I starting mapping out in the early 80s.  By the end of that decade I had a fat paper file and multiplying digital files of notes and rough drafts, character sketches and scene lists, maps and calendars, glossary and timelines, history and lore.  All of it was lost in a move.  Except one hard copy scene in my portfolio of pages I'd deemed worthy of the paper and ink.

When typing all of my hard copy drafts into new digital files in 2004 I expanded that one scene into several that approaches 3K and if I decide to go with cliff hanger chapter endings as is so popular in the genre it is probably a full first chapter for Book 1 and is titled The Mourning Mother.

I'm going to have to recreate all the world building from memory or completely from scratch as so much of it is so vague in my memory by now.  Even though I've gravitated to the literary genre since then this story still haunts me.

I was probably not a mature enough writer at the time to do it right but I think I am now.

One of the benefits of choosing this story to work on is that it is completely free of the FOS storyworld and there is no way I can hook it in by using FOS characters.  Unless I give it to Holly from Spring Fever as the fantasy series she was known for and wrote under a pseudonym to keep her academic literary poetry writing separate from her pop fic.  But even that won't tangle up the time lines which makes it so hard to work on any one story without vetting it with all the others.

Next week I will share that first chapter in its entirety in Friday Forays.  I once shared it in snippets for Friday Snippets a few years ago: Friday Snippets 23 and Friday Snippets 24 and Friday Snippets 25 but I think I've cleaned it up and expanded it some since then and I can see a few places to fix even now.

This chapter of course won't be included in my NaNo word count.

SERIES TITLE: THE WARD'S PREVAILING

BOOK 1: THE WAILING WOMB
BOOK 2: THE TRAVAILING WOEFUL
BOOK 3: THE AVAILING WORD