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Capturing it on paper

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THEY SAY THAT each of us has at least one novel in our head just waiting to be let out. But getting down to actually putting the story on paper is the mission impossible for most people. You have to be a professional novelist to write a novel, and ordinary people just don't do such things, they say. They leave novel writing to the professionals, just like they leave brain surgery and building houses to the experts.

Cassandra Mortmain is an ordinary 17-year-old who decides to write a novel. She has already written one or two poems, but feels her poetry is so bad that it's become a waste of time.

She doesn't have any great novel-writing plan, and she doesn't really know where her novel is going or where it will end. She just sits down and begins to write.

Cassandra's novel is about her life and family. It is divided into three diaries.

She watches, and occasionally takes part in events, but always writes everything down. She observes her family and the people who come into her life, and captures them all in her notebook. Writing a novel is not as difficult as everyone says.

The Mortmains live in a cold, derelict castle in the English countryside. They have no money and live each day as it comes.

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