Fun Facts About Project Gillory | Work In Progress August (Pt. 1)

You knew another post had to be coming about Project Gillory sooner or later.

*innocent smile*

Thanks to Lillian Keith’s post about her novella Should We Tell Her?, I stumbled across this new social media challenge where writers share a fun fact about their WIP each day for the first half of August! Seeing as I have no Facebook or Instagram, I decided to convert the challenge into a two-part blog post!

Thank you to Hannah Gaudette for launching this challenge! (If you want to join the fun, read her introduction post here!)

Disclaimer: Hannah is graciously allowing us to improvise on prompts if needed, so I’ve taken the liberty to reword numbers #2 and #3 to better fit my story!

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Writing Update

Yes, first a much-overdue writing update! My WIP (Christian historical romance set in 1947 London) has been in the works since November 2021, and has undergone several big changes. My writing has obviously changed (…dare I say, vastly improved) since beginning the novel, and that makes for quite a conflicting experience reading the chapters I wrote earlier on. I love the story, but every time I run into a cringe section…the urge to rewrite it sends me into spirals of editing.

Which isn’t always bad. I’m usually much happier with my rewrites, and there’s much to be said for a clean first draft – editing as you go is a completely valid method.

But what I need to focus on right now is drafting the last quarter of the story. Then I can freely dive into content and line edits. 🤣

To help me with that, I spent a few hours yesterday handwriting two short outlines of my novel – one for Gillory’s character arc, one for Ean’s.

My brother looked over my shoulder and asked in bewilderment why I wasn’t typing it. 🙄 😂 GUYS. There’s just something about physically writing on real paper that makes my ideas clearer and that keeps me focused.

Even though I already outlined most of my story (nothing too extensive, just the major story beats), I was quite overdue for an updated one that included a sketch of what happens in the last act, which is where I’m at.

So now, I know where I’m going and I have several new scenes I’m DYING to write. *blissful sigh* There’s nothing like that to get you motivated to write.

Long story short (literally 🤭), Project Gillory is chugging along in spite of all odds. Do keep the poor brain-dead author in your prayers as you happen to think of her.

Well, her and her characters, if the following sentence is any indicator.

He must look a sight—eyes bloodshot, face haggard and bruised, and tread stumbling from lack of sleep.

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Work In Progress August – Part One

1 – Describe your WIP in 3 words

Oh, that’s tricky. Here are the first three that come to mind, in terms of the theme and atmosphere:

Deep, vintage, enchanted.

2 – Describe your [heroine] with a line of dialog.

Gillory Durand: “But anyway, who’s to say I wasn’t born a nymph? Or a pixie, for that matter?”

3 – Describe your [hero] with a line of dialog.

Ean West: “I’m the sort of person you’d want as far away from a piano as possible. Can’t even carry a tune to save my life.”

I’m sorry, that one didn’t really do the poor guy justice 🤣 I would read through my story to find a line that really captures his personality, but it’s almost 400 pages, and I don’t exactly have time for that.

4 – Share the heart of the novel.

I want my readers to be reminded that living as though life is a performance is never worth it. You don’t need to pretend like you’ve got it all together. You won’t stop being worthy of love if you show the truth of who you are—the ugliness and brokenness deep inside, and even the beauty and dreams that you fear the world won’t understand. The Lord knows you, knows every little part of yourself that you refuse to acknowledge to others, and in spite of that, He is still with you. In Him, you already have all that your heart seeks, all that your soul needs.

5 – Share the inspiration for the novel.

Really, it was just a medley of things I’ve always wanted to include in a story. A pianist, an English setting with cobblestone streets and quaint shops, the 1940s, a WWII soldier, an emphasis on the season of autumn. The first image I had of the story was that of a girl with black hair in a red beret, walking down a leaf-lined street. I asked myself why she was there, where she was going, why her heart was so heavy, who she was thinking about…and the rest is history. ✨

6 – Share a photo that sums up your novel’s setting.

I hope I can get away with a collage instead of a single photo! 😇

7 – Share a song that reminds you of your novel.

A song?

As in…singular?

Impossible. Forgive me, but I cannot help myself.

*rifles through mile-long playlists*

• Skin by Cimorelli
• Unconditional by Katy Perry
• I Don’t Deserve It by Lisa Cimorelli
• God Only Knows by For King and Country
• Good Enough by Cimorelli
• Priceless by For King and Country
• Who I Am by Ben Fuller
• Wrong by Lisa Cimorelli
• The God Who Stays by Matthew West
• Run and Hide by Stephen Stanley
• Symphony by Clean Bandit

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If you want to read my random line from page 22 and are curious as to who I would cast to play Gillory (…and Ean), stay tuned for Part Two, which should be coming out next week!

Also…all my dear newsletter subscribers will soon be privy to an early sneak peek of the full prologue to Project Gillory. 🥀

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sign up while you can using the mysterious-looking button below!

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What’s a song that reminds you of your novel? What’s a line of dialogue that describes your protagonist Can you settle on three words that describe your novel? Do you ever think about which actors you would cast as your characters? Are you as music-obsessed as I am? Did you read every word you could make out of the outline? (I’m afraid my handwriting is neater than I’d thought 🤪)