With reluctance and humility, I set down the zero draft of my story.

It is the story about a teenage girl growing up in Portland and Cape Bridgewater during the years of drought and World War 1. It is a family story about hardship and poverty. At this stage I have just over 21,000 words in 21 chapters and 65 pages. So, it is short; too short?!

I have enjoyed the creative process of letting the story unfold. I have felt the emotions of my hero, lived in the era, understood the hardship, and asked the questions as they arose in my hero’s mind.

The story still needs: time to sit and set, to be fully edited, more emotion, more detail, more prose, more relationship, more revelations, more words, more wordsmithing.

Of course, it falls short of my high expectations, trying to follow in the footsteps of classic Australian novelists. But despite years of writing this and that, it is my first real attempt at writing a “book”.

While I wait for my story to cook, I will study the works of other authors and see what devices they use to embellish, evoke, and portray.