Novel-in-a-Year?

Last night saw the first meeting of the eleven would-be novelists and their tutors as we set out on our twelve month adventure together. We spent some time in advance deciding who was whom in the company. I was voted Gandalf despite my lack of beard (though I do have a similar hat somewhere), MG Harris (a fellow tutor) Bilbo, a new member nabbed Thorin on the grounds he had the sword, and that left a lot of baggsie-ing over Fili and Kili (I wonder why?).

The serious but fun part involved of this first session was working out what kind of writer we all are. I devised a quiz to winkle out the truth which involved such habits as the way you make your shopping list, which hobbit you thought you were most like, or what mental landscape you have, ranging from the Secret Garden to Mr Darcy’s Pemberley. If you want to write a novel in a year (whilst also doing the day job) my advice is to go with the grain of your nature. A super-meticulous planner will find it difficult to suddenly cast off the habits of a lifetime and become spontaneous; and it’s no good giving a free spirit a massive planning task before they start writing.

But we also discussed how you could be, say, spontaneous in everyday life, but a planner for your writing. It is working out who you really are that puts you on the right path.

This little band has now set off. Most of them (9 of the students) came to it through the Online Fantasy Course and are using it as a way to put what they learned there into a complete novel. If you’ve always wanted to do this yourself, or know someone who would love this, why not sign up for the next departure. The online fantasy course starts in October (places are already going), and the next novel-in-a-year in January 2022.

Contact us on info@projectnorthmoor.org for more information.