Finally! I am decided about how to write my novel

Believe it or not, once one has written a first draft, that is not the end of the novel, but only a very poor beginning.  In case you don't know it and have never tried to write a book, there are more curves, detours, ups and downs in a novel than you can imagine.  Once I began this project I made up my mind to finish it, and it will surely be done.  But if you know anything about me at all, you know that I do not do things to satisfy other people's desires and wishes so much  as I  do a project the way that I think it should be done.  And I admit I have been wrestling with this novel for a very long time.

There is no doubt that every author has his or her own methods. Today I was reading Steve Pressfield's article about writing on the edge.  I read his entire piece as well as the comments that were made by other authors and fans.  So I decided then to read more about Janet Lewis, an author I came to know through my discussion group on Louis XIV. Sandra Gulland, a famous author in her own right, told me about Janet Lewis so I proceeded to read her book on Martin Guerre.  I fell in love with her style of writing.  She is very tight, concise, and chooses her words well.  I loved her storytelling skills.   So I learned a few things that i had not known.  She lived to 99, and she and her husband moved to Palo Alto so that he could work at Stanford University. Irony of Ironies!

Steve Pressfield has written his own books on the topic of Alexander which I have read from cover to cover. I own the Virtues of War.  My favorite book that Steve wrote is about Leonidas and the battle of Thermopylae which is called The Gates of Fire.  He also wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance, a fantasy tale about golfing.

He has a blog in which he encourages writers to keep up with their goals, to pursue them, and how to overcome problems.  A favorite topic of his is about resistance.  There is little doubt that any writer has to face many obstacles in his writing, but at the crux of it all in my opinion is the problem of devising a story that will maintain the interest of the writer himself.

I have to envision the completion of the novel itself before I can even begin it.  I have to see it as a completed whole.  I like to know the final chapter of the novel so that I know my destination.  In the case of historical fiction, it is easy to devise a conclusion to the story for all of this has happened already.  We want the conclusion of our novel to be accurate with the real history of the individual.

So because I realized something while reading both Steve Pressfield's blog and then reading about Janet Lewis's history as a writer, I finally decided how to write my novel.   To think that it has taken me this long to finally decide how to write this novel seems a bit crazy.  But I have wanted this book to be something special...I guess I am on the edge...