THE FORMLESS FORM OF NOVEL WRITING

You might be asking yourself what the title of this post means. The formless form of novel writing? To that I respond in the words of one of my favorite childhood icons Bruce Lee, "Be water, my friend."

In other words, adapt or perish.

By now I thought I would be 50,000 words into my new novel "THE MOONBEAM RIDER," a multicultural Young Adult novel geared towards the female "HUNGER GAMES" audience. My tagline is: THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK meets WAR OF THE WORLDS.

However I'm only half that far along in my book.

What's going on? For one, time management (I've got a crazy schedule). Two, I've hit some sticky points story-wise that I have to work through. Three, I've, for some reason, become a little stale on the material (even though I'm watching tons of UFO documentaries and loving it).

Now many writers at this point, would probably shelve their project or put it on the back burner.

Not me. I have a schedule of novels I'm writing and I plan to stick to it. Plus, I love the projects that I'm working on. The subject matters of all the novels I'm writing and will be writing are very close to my heart. It is a true labor of love. 

So what do I do to get over this bump in the road?

CHANGE THE PACE! Since I planned on adapting MBR into a screenplay as soon as I had the novel finished like I did with my last novel, I figured why not shake up the process.

So I began the screenplay adaptation NOW and all of a sudden I'm looking at the material through fresh eyes. Writing a screenplay is way different than writing a novel and has to approached in an entirely different manner. By doing this, I'm even having new ideas for the novel.

I have one third of the book written (about 70 pages). In screenwriting format, that should equate to the first act. Feature film scripts are composed of three acts.  

My plan is to write the first act of my screenplay, then go back to the novel. Probably, I'll jump back to the screenplay after I finish the next 70 pages of the book and write the second act of my screenplay.

This may seem unorthodox, but I say whatever gets the job done. Plus it solves a couple of other problems for me. My literary manager, who is currently shopping the screenplay adaptation of my last book in Hollywood, is asking me when I'm going to have another project for him to sell. This speeds up my timetable of delivering another script to him. Also, when I finished my last novel, I held on to it for four months while I marketed it.

So, this time around, by the time I finish my first rough draft of the MBR novel, I should have a pretty polished screenplay adaptation. Then, while I'm dealing with my editor and going back and forth with changes and rewrites of the book, I can begin my marketing campaign as well. 

So I'm actually using my writing block to get even more done. 

You see, there is no one way to write a novel. Whenever you have a problem, there is a solution. You just have to think of it. 

ALLIED EARTH needs you... to fight the Grays.