I just finished writing a novel (the one I mentioned in my previous post), and boy is this feeling exhilarating! Also, there is this overwhelming sense of relief. Word count: 55,827 words. Warning: Anybody who says it is too short to be considered a novel, will be shot. In the genitals.
To say I'm excited is a little bit of an understatement. I've written novels before of course, and they've been monsters that have reached almost 100,000 words, but they've all been stinkers and worse, they've all been unfinished. Unfinished in the sense that I managed to get to the first draft stage, then decided it wasn't worth it to plow on with them. A polished turd is still a turd. This novel, I can say with some confidence, has the potential of being not a stinking turd.
It's just a first draft of course and there's still a lot of work to be done to get it shiny and polished well enough for publication. There are names to be changed, MacGuffins to be inserted and Chekhov's Guns to be fired. I'll be spending the next month or so rewriting and editing and whatnot but before that happens, I'm taking a break by writing a short story simply because I owe a short story for April.
I haven't mentioned it before but for 2015, I'm again taking on my resolutions I made for 2008, which is to write a new short story every month and end up with twelve by the end of the year. I've successfully written one each month so far and have three awesome stories, one of which has already found a home in a soon-to-be-announced science fiction anthology. (Side note: if you read that blog post I linked to, you'll notice the other resolution is to finish a novel. Guess who totally just aced that resolution *wink wink nudge nudge*)
And when that's done, I'll dive back into my novel and hopefully work out the kinks enough so I can be confident in sending them to my beta readers who are already excited (or so they say) to read it. Well, I hope I can live up to their expectations.
To say I'm excited is a little bit of an understatement. I've written novels before of course, and they've been monsters that have reached almost 100,000 words, but they've all been stinkers and worse, they've all been unfinished. Unfinished in the sense that I managed to get to the first draft stage, then decided it wasn't worth it to plow on with them. A polished turd is still a turd. This novel, I can say with some confidence, has the potential of being not a stinking turd.
It's just a first draft of course and there's still a lot of work to be done to get it shiny and polished well enough for publication. There are names to be changed, MacGuffins to be inserted and Chekhov's Guns to be fired. I'll be spending the next month or so rewriting and editing and whatnot but before that happens, I'm taking a break by writing a short story simply because I owe a short story for April.
I haven't mentioned it before but for 2015, I'm again taking on my resolutions I made for 2008, which is to write a new short story every month and end up with twelve by the end of the year. I've successfully written one each month so far and have three awesome stories, one of which has already found a home in a soon-to-be-announced science fiction anthology. (Side note: if you read that blog post I linked to, you'll notice the other resolution is to finish a novel. Guess who totally just aced that resolution *wink wink nudge nudge*)
And when that's done, I'll dive back into my novel and hopefully work out the kinks enough so I can be confident in sending them to my beta readers who are already excited (or so they say) to read it. Well, I hope I can live up to their expectations.
I'm very excited. Looking forward to reading it. =)
ReplyDeleteThanks John! So many things to fix before that can happen though. Characters changing names, a MacGuffin changes from a microfilm to a data tape to a diskette... haha what did I get myself into
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