New Novel Start

So I started a new novel.  Typically, these drafts don't live long.  This will be at least my ninth novel attempt, eighth novel idea (one idea was reattempted later).  I've yet to finish a novel.  I've yet to come close to finishing a novel.  In fact, I have three novelettes I haven't even finished writing.  My longest completed story consists of only 2,978 words.  I have only six completed stories (though one is unedited) that are longer than 2,000 words and fourteen total completed stories over 1,000 words.  That leaves around 160 stories of less than 1,000 words.

My working title for this novel is "Teya."  At this stage of the game, I'm not using the accent aigu over the "e," but I think I'll add one in a later draft.  The novel has French inspirations with somewhere toward 17th-century technology.  It is adult fantasy, though it reads currently more like YA.  I'm still puzzling through the subgenre.  It has some mystery elements, at least at the beginning, and it feels a bit like Sword & Sorcery, though I would prefer Epic Fantasy.

After just over seven days of work (and only a short amount of time per day), I have 2,609 words written.  That makes this novel attempt my third-longest, I believe, after both attempts at my first novel idea.  My second attempt at my first idea garnered about 3,000 words, while my first attempt at my first idea hit around 11,000 words before I decided to start over.  I have one novelette with around 2,200 words, another with around 4,000 words, and a third that's over 6,000 words so far.  Hopefully, I'll one day finish at least the latter two of these three (especially the last).  My strategy with this novel attempt is to force myself to write at least a little bit every day and to keep adding words even though my draft so far is pretty dreadful.  I just want to get a finished draft, then I can start over from the beginning and make it clean enough to start normal editing.

This story begins with Teya discovering the corpse of her friend and Defender (in-book jargon) Jean.  Like one of the characters from a previous novel attempt (you can look at the first chapter, all or most of what I wrote before abandoning the story, by scrolling through this tag), she is missing a hand.  The process to become a mage requires the severing of a hand, but for many the ritual fails, as was the case for Teya.  Still, she was given an important role by her village, out of respect for her courageousness, what I'm calling in this draft "Chef d'Intelligence."  Hopefully I'll come up with a better name at some point.

I have very little clue where this story will go, but I know that I need to make my way toward a Call to Action, and that will probably come within the next 5,000 to 10,000 words.  There's already a certain level of disturbance, but it hasn't manifested as a true quest yet.  When I get there, I should be able to churn out words a bit faster.

I'll keep everyone posted on my progress through Teya.  I'm not so much worried about the quality of the book this time around.  I just want a completed draft.