What was I thinking?

Oof. I don’t think that’s a real word, but it fits. When I envisioned Ingrid, The Viking Maiden, I thought of it as a middle-grade adventure story. After all, I’ve spent the last twenty-five years concentrating on being a mom to two girls, and I couldn’t see myself as someone who could write for an adult audience. Apparently, I was dead wrong. I didn’t get middle grade right, at all. The manuscript was boring and flat. My characters were two-dimensional without any reason to care about them. It would not have appealed to anyone, and the biggest reason was that I wasn’t true to myself. I was trying to write what I thought I should, not the story in my heart. That will never work. The novel I wrote for the NaNoWriMo challenge was a young adult fantasy. It excited me and I had a lot of fun with it. That’s because I love to read young adult fantasy.

That’s what I needed to write too. Stories that I could sink my teeth into and love, even if no one else ever did (I hope that’s not true). That’s how you get a good book. If it comes from the heart, breathed from the soul with passion and love, then it has the chance to resonate with readers. Writing something you think someone else will like for the sake of being liked, is hogwash. Ok, I should call it what it is – crap. Yes, my lack of ability to swear is part of my hesitation to enter the young adult world. That’s ok; I have given myself permission to be myself. In the end, I will have a better, more interesting story because of it. Even without a shit-full of damn swear words. Whew. That was hard. (Smile)

It did mean though that my 36,000-word count had to more than double and instead of an edit I was looking at a full-blown revision.

I’ve got this.

Did that sound convincing?