First of all, I finished that novel(la):

So yes, yes I did write that blasted thing. At work, my stack of writing to mark grew to unfathomable heights (sorry kids!) and my mornings and nights and weekends were spent trying to squeeze out just a few more words.

I didn’t know I had so many words in me. In fact, looking back, I don’t think I did.

I looked over my not-exactly-a-novel last night for the first time since I slammed that Pages file shut on monday, when I hit 50,028 words (mid sentence, yet! I was that done with it!) and realized that it was just a fictionalized extended blog post, with lots of cats, goats and monsters thrown in. Not that it was bad, no- it wasn’t nearly as odious as I had led myself to believe whilst I was writing it and dutifully not looking back. No, I actually kind of like it. However, this ridiculously arbitrary exercise has taught me a few things about writing that I will diligently not turn into a Top Ten List here.

Uno:

I discovered that even when I have the infinite possibilities of  fiction presented to me, I still don’t actually do stuff in my writing.  By this, I mean I still write the phone book. I can write 2000 words in one sitting in which not one character has actually even lifted a finger or budged an inch. You want sword fights? Adventure? Battles? Magic? Conflict? A plot driven story line that just propels itself forward? Yeah, no.

I spent 50,028 words in a fairly linear direction from here to there, with an uneventful train journey, a long uneventful hike in a parallel universe forest and a series of relatively uneventful encounters with various unexpected water monster villages. Nobody gets killed. No one even gets a paper cut. A few cats have a brief quarrel. A water monster is peeved because another water monster snores. The main character is hungry and a bit tired a lot of the time. A lot of coffee is drunk and sofas are sat on. Conversations and thoughts predominate.

I will not be the next JK Rowling.

I may be your next phone book compiler.

Dos:

I repeat myself. A lot. It’s like I have a one track mind. I didn’t stop to reread as I wrote as I knew my inner editor (let’s call her Marsha) would start getting cranky and annoyed and I’d end up deleting a lot of words when my main purpose was bulk bulk bulk. I was diligently not contracting words (so many ‘I will’s and  ‘he is’s and ‘did not’s and suchlike) and was carefully rhythmically repeating words and phrases in a way that I hoped was both poetic and word-count enhancing.

And looking back, I realized that I repeated a lot of inner monologues… except I was getting my characters mixed up for the first week or two, and so first one and then another and then another had the same (but differently phrased) thoughts/reactions.

This extended to my complete lack of action as well: in that uneventful hike through the parallel universe, they came across one village (description ensues) then eat dinner, have a glass of wine and maybe a coffee, then go to bed. Repeat in next village, with different food, different monsters, different conversations, different mood.

It was almost like I had decided to riff on a theme on an endless loop. When you reread it, it doesn’t seem like a series of repeated events because all the little bits change and most of it takes place within speech and thought, but it is still pretty stupid, narratively speaking.

Tres:

I actually finished it. Which is something I have never done before. I’m not really someone who follows through with… stuff. Yay. And it isn’t bad. I need to repeat this for myself again: it actually isn’t awful. Yay me! I pulled a half decent novella out of my backside in 30 days without any forethought or planning or even brainstorming before hand. All the characters and events just showed up as I ploughed through it. And (in my mind) they are actually interesting.

And I managed to successfully include goats and the phrase ‘coke-fuelled rampage’, as requested by others.

Quatro:

I think I prefer 600 word blog posts.

Any day now, I should be getting an email from the lovely Heather over at Matador.com asking for the follow up to the initial profile they did on me (and three others- am not that special), with an excerpt of the novel. Am desperately scanning all 87 pages, looking for something that would both make sense and not make me regret sharing it later.  Like I said, it isn’t bad…it’s just kind of…um…kind of….um….goaty.  And water monstery. And suchlike.