Blog Hop: My Writing Process, by Farida Mestek

I was tagged by Courtney J. Hall to participate in “My Writing Process” blog hop. Hop over to her BLOG to read her answers. Here are mine: 

1) What am I working on? At the moment I'm working on a fantasy novel about a seventeen-year-old princess who must bring her abandoned kingdom back from oblivion. I've been working on this particular version of the book for about two years now, reworking it from a novella-length fairy-tale that I originally wrote many years ago, when I didn't know what I was doing. 

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? I think it has quite a lot of differences. It doesn't have any typical fantasy creatures and beings. It doesn't have fights or epic battles, even though the fate of the whole kingdom is at stake, and it's strictly female-centered. In fact, you'll have to squint hard to find a male character there! Also, my heroine is not as clueless as other heroes and heroines in her situation usually are. I don't mean to say that she knows everything – there's plenty for her to learn on her way to her goal – but she knows enough not to blunder abound in the dark, feeling like a fish out of water, which allows her to contribute on equal terms to her companion's store of knowledge. 

3) Why do I write what I do? I always loved magic and I love writing about kingdoms with ancient history, magical castles and manors with underground tunnels; enchantments, potions and magical objects that help (or hinder) my heroine on her journey. 

4) How does my writing process work? I'm a plotter. I must know the beginning and the ending of the book before I start writing and I must know the names of the main characters, because I won't be able to start otherwise. I make a detailed plan of the plot and write it down, because I need to know where the story is going. But I don't plot out every single scene (unless they come already fully-formed into my head), because it's lots of fun to discover and to explore unknown components of the story as I go along, and I love those “A-ha!” moments that simply cannot be planned in advance. I often struggle with the middle of the book, because it's often the least defined part from the outset, but, in return, it supplies me with means and ways that I haven't thought of before. 

I tag Anna Shevchenko – an aspiring writer, a blogger newbie and my critique partner, who lives in Odessa, Ukraine just like me. Visit her BLOG where she posts her newspaper articles in Russian as well as a series of posts on her five favourite things since her childhood in English.