A (Brief) History... Continuation

I was planning to take a long hiatus after I finished Eleanor II. I really thought that two novels were going to be it.

But... another dream visited me. And even though it wasn't as pivotal a dream as the one I had of Eleanor I (which really was, the turning point of the story), I decided to pursue it nonetheless.

The dream was quite simple. There was a girl (I think my story would always revolve around 'a girl') approaching a double floor-to-ceiling mahogany door, about to exit the house when a guy, standing on the third step of the spiraling marbled staircase, called her and casually asked her out.

Granted, when I actually wrote this scene, it turned out to be completely different from the dream. Whilst the guy did casually ask the girl out, they were actually sitting on one of the many benches at Central Park, sipping Starbucks coffee, enjoying the fall breeze against their skins.

It was the birth of two new characters. Elizabeth Hartley - a child from cross-racial marriage, whose appearance somehow, doesn't quite match her name. She has squinty Asian eyes, beige complexion (not quite as fair as many Caucasians but not as dark as many Asians). She's tall (I've made her to be five-foot-nine), inheriting her Father's Caucasian gene. And Michael Bradford, the sole heir of the multi-billionaire, totally infatuated by Elizabeth precisely because she was very peculiar.

The novel spanned over ten years of their lives (and a bit more), following from their first meeting on the first day of high school, the 'trials and tribulations' of surviving high school, with both trying to self-discover and build their characters against issues such as bullying, teenage rowdy parties, and (ahem!) sex; to college, where they agonised over specialisations they wanted to take, the joy of being twenty-one and discovering alcoholic drinks; to beyond, standing on their own two feet in the world, finding their passion in work and otherwise, balancing their relationships with respective partners and keeping their friendships alive.

At first, this started as one huge novel, with the word count mounting up to 433,000 and the pages reaching 1200! And then, on the 1289th page, the word document kept crashing I had to dissect this into 4 huge sections, and so began Elizabeth & Michael: Titles still in progress, I-IV.
Apart from the fourth and last novel, which is pretty much completed, the other three still have quite a few holes in it. And because my inspirations come in bouts, and in no particular order, I am working on the other three novels simultaneously (insert a big, long sigh here)...

I have (wishful thinking) set a deadline of end of this year, but I don't think I am going to meet that. For now, I am satisfied that in a span of 2 years, I have managed to complete about 2/3 of each novels.