So it has begun! How many words have you written so far? As of writing this post, I’m at 1386. I’ve started a brand new story and honestly have no clue what it’s about or where I’m going with it, but that’s how I write. I wrote a story a couple of years ago for NaNo and when I started that one I had no idea what it was going to be about or anything. But I wrote a lot. It turned out to be a very weird, but intriguing story. One that I might actually publish one day. I actually don’t outline until I’ve already written the first draft because a lot of times I just want the creativity to flow and I don’t want to have to worry about the pacing or sequence of events or anything like that. I worry about that when I’m working on the first revision. What do you do? Do you use an outline?

In light of the Halloween festivities, and reading lists of best creepy/horror books, I was reminded how much I enjoyed writing horror. I grew up reading R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike and all those books alike. There was a lot of books I never read because I never knew about them but I remember going to the bookstore with my mom and brother and always finding books that I wanted to read. So I started writing stories in similar fashion. Ghost stories, horror, It wasn’t until my freshman year that I started writing a contemporary young adult drama (that same year I wrote a young adult novel about a serial killer). After that, I wrote what is now called Pieces of Me and then I wrote about three detective novels a la James Patterson. I have always been fascinated with horror and otherworldly beings and such and I try to incorporate that in my novels. I have several creepy scenes in my Enchanter Series (that I’m quite proud of). Hopefully, this new story will have some awesome scenes in it as well.

On that note, I must get back to it!

Happy writing,

Carrigan