I got up to 1857, letting it stop there for tonight. Starting is always the hardest part for me. Now that the story is rolling a bit, it should come a little easier. I just have to fight off the desire to edit everything six or seven times before moving on. It's worse than heroin, this editing addiction.
It doesn't help that I haven't finished my research. I was hoping I could meet a particular Czech friend this week and discuss traditional fairy tales, stories, random bits of history, life in a village (I have only lived in Prague), and various other details that I will need, but she was too busy. She said she should be able to find some time next week. I hope so, otherwise I'll surely have to rewrite loads of stuff once I have the correct information.
My "buddy list" on the site seems to feature 2 kinds of users: the ones who have written 4000+ words already and the ones who have hardly started yet. I seem to be the only one who went just a little over the minimum and then stopped. We'll see how it goes. I suppose that in many parts of the world it isn't already 9.30 at night.
I can't resist the temptation to share a snippet as well. It always helps my motivation when I know people are reading something, even if it's unfinished.
Anne knew better than to believe such foolish stories. Witches were a fairy tale based on the sexist persecution of women hundreds of years ago. There were no accepted legends about Iroquois warriors turning into wolf spirits, and all actual wolves had been wiped out in this area when it was first settled by Europeans, to protect their livestock. She had looked it up on Wikipedia. As for the kids seeing demons’ eyes, she certainly wasn’t about to trust the word of some kids who broke their curfew and snuck out at night. And anyway, plenty of animals’ eyes seemed to glow in the dark. If they had seen anything, it was probably just a cat.
She didn’t like cats very much.
As a vehement cat lover, I feel it is important to have a character who doesn't like cats so that she can learn the error of her ways over the course of the story. Also, this character is nine years old.
I'm having fun already. : )