Just 50,000 Words to Go

In the wee hours of the morning on a bitterly damp day in a train car hidden in a lush forest north of Paris, WWI came to an end.  It was agreed by Allied and German powers that on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, fighting would cease. Americans called it Armistice Day, the day impromptu parties erupted in city streets all around the world.

Yes- it’s one hundred years after Armistice, and as synchronicity would have it, I am attending a writing retreat where my goal is to begin writing my historical novel, based on my grandmother’s life as an ambulance driver in France during WWI.

I’ve spent a year researching and creating the backstory for my characters.  More recently, I’ve agonized over my words as they formed on the screen, so much so, that I can’t shake the feeling that for me, the war is just about to begin. I can feel it heating up – this battle to write the perfect story. I can hear the heavy armor of political opinion, tense and polarizing; I see the suffragettes’ angry banners whip about as they march up Fifth Avenue on that blustery fall day in 1915; I feel the fear in the horses’ bodies as they are loaded onto over-crowded ships headed for France. 

This book has become my life. So far, I have seven scenes and 10,000 words that are worth anything, having thrown out at least that many. My characters wake me up in the wee hours of the morning and won’t let go. They want to get on the page. My goal is to have a rough draft ready to send to my editor by December 31^st.

Will you help me get there?  I would love an occasional email of encouragement. It really helps! (I’ll even keep you up to date with my word count, if that means anything to you.)[