This morning, at approximately 7:30 a.m. I finished the rough draft of my book. The working title has been "Click," but I don't know if that's what it will stay -probably, not.
Without really trying to look, I can say, without shame, the current body of words is a terrible mess. I've got grammatical and structural things to fix, as well as a couple of gaping plot holes, a few characters I'm not sure I defined effectively and some pacing issues I need to correct. Some of this sounds worse than it is and some of it is probably worse than I think.
Doesn't matter. According to everybody, the time you put into writing the book is one third the time you put into editing it.
I will start that tomorrow. So, maybe (big maybe) some time in February or March, I'll have something to send someone. It is the book I wanted to write. I'm proud of it. I'm looking forward to the sleepless nights ahead working on the thing's motor, smoothing the dents and slapping a coat of paint on it. There's no telling if what I've done will be anything worth publishing. That's not something I get to choose... or at least, will choose.
Either way, a novel is a novel. I'm a novelist.
Fucking A.
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9 comments:
That's pretrty awesome!
Lots of people talk about writng a novel. You did it.
That takes a lot self discipline - and usually lots of caffeine(sp?)!
The fact you were able to put 40,000 words on paper in a cohesive flow is a hell of an accomplishment - whether it sucks or not.
Way to go Bill!
And yeah, I'm jealous.
Congrats, man. Way to kick ass to get that done.
How 'bout a taste?
I haven't checked the word count, but a rough estimate is around 90,000. My novel writing prof said I needed to have it come in over 80,000 and less than 120,000.
With the editing and revisions, it will probably edge up to 100,000 words, but not much over.
And yes... a taste tomorrow.
I'm sure your novel writing prof knows what he/she is talking about, but I don't get the 80-120k words thing. It reminds me of the scene in "Amadeus" where the king is complaining that the piece "has too many notes".
I'm sorry, Mr. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five simply has too few words to be considered. Why don't you drag it out a little and resubmit?
The 80 to 120 thing is for first-time novelists. The reason, as I understand it, has to do with what the buying public is willing to plop 7 bucks down for in paperback.
People like Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut can write novellas, publish and sell them -no problem. Of course, none of them did that without first having a substantial track record and even King published some of his earlier novellas like "The Shawshank Redemption" as part of a collection.
That's okay. When I wrote my book, I wasn't shooting for the minimum. I figured going into it that it was going to take me about what it did. I knew that after I had thirty thousand words down and the end was nowhere in sight.
When I was trying to play along with the November Novel writing thing, I was worried about having to end it at 50.
The next one... well, that's another story isn't it?
Fuckin' A indeed. Good on ya!
Good for you! Last time I tried to write a novel, I was 20 and got three quarters of the way through before I hit that "well... I have no idea how I'm going to finish this" brick wall that most inexperienced first-time writers hit.
The fact that it was a totally meaningless, surreal piece of garbage was, of course, another brick wall that was waiting to be hit, further down the line...
Congratulations!!
Someday I hope to join you in that group.
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