HALF WAY TARGET

Well, it's day forty one of the MYWYN (or 80 thousand words in 80 days). As you can see from my progress meter, I'm slightly ahead of myself. Not a usual position for me to be in, I'm usually chasing my tail to keep up, but this week I've found it difficult to keep my characters quiet. And who am I to complain?  It feels good to have reached the top of the mountain but from now on it could be all downhill. Let's hope not.
The story is set in Medieval times, and is about a Viking warrior and a girl (well, what did you expect?). Of course there's a lot in between but I'm not about to spill it all here, after all I want you all to read it when it's published - yeah right, I can dream big.

This week I had to write a fight scene and like many of you I would imagine, I've never been in battle so I wasn't sure how to go about it. And I'm a girl. We don't do any of the pretend fighting stuff with wooden swords and plastic guns. We practice singing in the mirror with a hairbrush mike and play at 'shops'... don't we? Anyway I digress.
One thing I am sure about is that it will need lots of work when I come to edit the finished draft. But what struck me is how I'd be lost without the internet and without Google.
As I live in Italy I don't have access to the libraries like I used to in the UK. Even if I didn't live in the sticks and had access to one here, my Italian isn't good enough (no way near) to utilise any reference section they might have. So I have to rely on what is available in the deep, dark chasm of the World Wide Web . It's amazing. I just typed in 'how to write a fight scene' and came across thousands of links to blogs, articles, pictures and books depicting fights and fight strategies.
The power of access to information has also been evident in my quest to write in the Fantasy genre, another challenge I've set myself.  I have spent many a delirious hour - and more - looking at world-building, naming characters, developing a language and weaving in animal heroes and villains. It's just never ending.

Trouble is I could spend many more hours happily being distracted, but that won't get the story written, so I'm going to have to put a curfew on my surfing activities.

Until Later...