Hello, my love-o-lees. So I have yet to really make a significant contribution to my novel this month. I’ve had yet another epiphany (they’re really not that hard to discover, you just have to be thinking all the time) regarding the success of this endeavour. Some novels will crash and burn, like September and Octobers did and here are the possible reasons why:
1. The story line’s too involved/complicated to be done by a neophyte novelist (or perhaps any) in a month. This is pretty self-explanatory. I might have succeed if the subplot wasn’t so twisty and it could actually be broken up into 2 or more novels.
2. The genre is too specific and I can’t accommodate its style with mine. This means that there will never be a dick tracey-esque story in my literary career (other than the short story spoof that was based on dogs, not people à la “Dogs Playing Poker” idea). That’s okay because I really don’t enjoy reading them.And you should writer what you enjoy, correct?
3. There just isn’t a story in me at the moment that fulfills this month’s genre. With the horror, I love it, I had an idea but it wasn’t to the point where I was ready to write it. Perhaps nothing will come of it or perhaps it’s an amalgamation of too many that I’ve come across in the past so it’s at best unoriginal, at worst plagerism. Maybe one day true inspiration will strike and I’ll think of something original.
4. Pascal and Jose(fiend)phine won’t leave me alone. Writers have strange bedfellows sometimes. And the strangeness isn’t always all that great. Dreams and nightmares can be the richest sources of material (when you can remember them) but laying awake at night debating on what the best word is to describe a character’s underpants or fighting the impulse to edit/delete your work is not conducive to your writing. And please, think twice before defenstrating your computer.
All that being said, I’m really happy about this month’s story. I was hoping to make it to the Sunday write-in at a library yesterday but I got lost on the bus and found myself at a different branch. Instead of working on my piece I rented 2 books and they both are in the 1st person narrative that I decided to use. I’m taking this deviation from my master plan for Sunday’s writing as a sign that I’m on the right track. But more importantly, it’s shown me that narrative-heavy stories can be engrossing and that they can work. Yay for me because I’ve come to the conclusion that I suck at dialogue.
So with this in mind I’ve decided to go for broke and see how close to 25,000 words I can get by next Monday. If I manage to make that, don’t be surprised if i post on Monday that i’m on a transplant list for new fingers because I’ve worked mine down to little nubs. Let’s do the math:
I’m starting with 233 words today. 25,000-233= 24,767. Now 24,767/7= 3,538.14 but let’s just round it up to 3,600 because I like symmetry and 3,600 is much more aesthetically pleasing than 3,538.14. It’s like swearing- it sounds prettier in French but more literal in German.
So that leaves me with 3,600 words per day for the next week. Can I do it? Where’s my coffee and laptop? I’m determined to end this slacking off. Right. Now.
So without further ado, let’s get started. Keep me on track this week and hold me to this promise! I’ll resume my former practice of posting that day’s word count and will include the day end tally, both word count and page count.
12 Novels in 12 Months 