Wednesday 18 October 2023: Floodgates open

Once I’d wiped the slate clean yesterday, the floodgates opened. I started to work on just one project of my own, and that project was The Secret of Whitehorse Farm for NaNoWriMo 2023.

After tea I sat down to scribble in my journal. I scribbled and scribbled and scribbled and came up with the names for the members of the two main families. Once I had my main people, I outlined the first sequence of the first act. It was as though now I had free rein, there was no stopping me. I didn’t want to stop.

Stop I had to, though, as it was already midnight by the time I finished. Not that I’d spent the entire evening between tea and midnight doing it. I watched some telly, read a book, played a game or two, and also scribbled in my journal.

When I went to bed, I still couldn’t rest. I came up with the name for one of the main character’s friends, and I also started musing about potential sequels.

Readers of the newsletter will know I’ve already had a play with book covers for this project. I really liked both of my original designs and had even played around with them for the cover of the January magazine. But following some bestseller research on Amazon, I had another go. Here are my first three attempts:

Although I liked number 3, I still wasn’t entirely happy. I liked the main image and the poet suggested I add a couple of people to the path, which if you look closely you’ll see that I have. I even changed the colour of their outfits to match the surroundings a bit. But it still wasn’t doing it for me.

So today, after I opened up Scrivener to start a NaNoWriMo 2023 writing diary (with worked examples), I had another play.

And reader, I played ALL DAY.

I still liked that main image for cover 3 above, but I wanted a woman in the foreground. And when I found an image I liked, I had to see if there were at least two more. There were, but there were some images of a brunette that I liked, and I wanted her to be a brunette, and there were some images of a blonde that I liked.

In the end, I decided that the blonde ones were more suitable and less boring, so my main character (Nettie Campbell) is now a blonde. Here’s what I eventually came up with by the end of today:

There are even a further two images of the same style in case I end up with a 5-book set.

I’m not saying these will stay like this for ever. It’s just something I do to get me started and keep me interested. But this is what I’ve been doing all day. (Sigh!) Ah, well. At least it’s something, and it’s work. All opinions welcome.

Off I toddled to change the cover of my NaNo project on the NaNo site, but I had to tear myself away from the cover design.

Tomorrow I have editing to do.