Week One #MyWIPMay2019

After months of having no motivation to put words on a page, I’m back!

One Camp NaNo has just ended, and another one is about to begin, and I won’t participate in either this year, so I’m taking the blog posts of this month to talk about my current WIP. I found a daily Instagram challenge by @vesselofink, but as I don’t have a dedicated book Instagram account and don’t want to do short blog posts every day, I’m going to try a weekly post and answer a bunch of the questions at once. Sounds good

Check out the challenge:

So, let’s begin!

 

1. What is your current word count? What are you hoping to be at by the end of the month?

My current word count is 39,781 words, and it’s been a while since I’ve written more than a handful of words each week. My college coursework and exams are coming to an end soon, so I’m hoping to finish the first draft over summer! By the end of the month, I’m just hoping that the word count increases, whether is a few dozen or a few thousand words.

 

2. What’s the basic summary of your WIP?

When children and teenagers are on the brink of death, their souls visit a personal heaven before moving on to their final resting place. This place is called the Paper Forest.

 

3. What’s your title? Is it a work in progress? Are there other titles you’re considering?

The title is ‘Paper Forests’. I originally thought that the title was just going to be a working title as it reminds me a lot of ‘Paper Towns’ and is heavily inspired by an unreleased album title, but it stuck with me and it couldn’t be more right for the story.

 

4. What’s your favourite character? How are they introduced?

My favourite character is called August but I might have to name him because three books have come out since I made him, all with main characters called ‘August’. He is introduced as soon as we arrive in the Forest, and he doesn’t say a single word until a few chapters in. I love him.

 

5. Your favourite ship in your WIP?

There’s two male main characters that my entire heart belongs to and their hearts belong to each other. As there’s only really one ship in the story, I don’t really want to give away anything more than that.

 

6. What’s the biggest mistake your MC has ever made?

The Paper Forest is a place for people who are dead or dying, so I think my main character’s biggest mistake is the series of events that led him into the Forest.

 

7. What or who inspired you to write?

A majority of my inspiration comes from music and the stories behind songs, and ‘Paper Forests’ was the same. ‘The Paper Kingdom’ was the working title of the unfinished/unreleased fifth studio album by My Chemical Romance. It was allegedly an album centred around a therapy support group for parents with dead kids. This is a concept that stuck with me for months (because I became a MCR fan after the breakup and that spiralled into an obsession about trying to find out every single thing possible about their work) before an idea began to snowball and I started writing a story about those dead kids.

 

8. Appreciation day for your most underrated character!

The characters are currently the least developed part of the WIP and there’s such a small cast that basically every character that isn’t the narrator is underrated.

 

9. List some of your favourite dialogues from your WIP, with or without context.

These aren’t dialogue, but they’re some of my favourite quotes from the book because the scenes create moments of light in the darkness.

 

10. Create a moodboard/character aesthetic for your MC.

I am one of those writers who has a Pinterest board that is more detailed than the plot outline. It has pictures of what I imagine all the main characters to look like, is very green, and has lots of hands reaching around trees and bruised knuckles and bloody feet. It gives off more of a creepy adventure or horror vibe rather than contemporary fantasy, but I love it.

 

Now a question for you! Who or what inspired your current work in progress? Do you usually get inspired by the same things?