Remember the novel I wrote in 18 days last November, as part of National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo)? Remember how all I could blog about all month was how crappy my novel was?
The thing about writing a novel that fast is that there’s no time for editing or even reading what you’ve already written. You just keep pounding out the words and reminding yourself that Nanowrimo is all about quantity, not quality. As soon as I hit 50,000 words, I was just so relieved to have it over with, I couldn’t bear to look at it again. So it languished – unread, unedited, untouched – on my hard drive for eight months.
June 30th was the deadline for submitting our manuscripts to CreateSpace.com for a single free published copy of our books. GC and I waited til the last minute, then we scrambled to get them submitted by midnight. We had to choose covers, upload author photos, write back-cover blurbs, and create PDFs of the text formatted for paperback books.
Our novels arrived on Monday. Mine is 176 pages long.
I read it for the very first time this week.
I was so surprised. I’d forgotten almost everything about my novel. It wasn’t nearly as cringe-worthy as I thought it would be. Sure, it had its faults, including some gaping holes in the plot, but on the whole I thought it was pretty good. I actually liked reading it. I loved some of my characters, especially the ones based on real people. I laughed out loud in a few places. And I was very impressed that I wrote it in just 18 days.
I’m feeling inspired now to write something else!
*I chose that title so that if anybody saw it on my bookshelf, they wouldn’t be tempted to pick it up.
So when do we get to read it?
Hmm. Good question. You’d like it Murt – BK is the villain.
I second that question!
Now that you have discovered the latent power within you, for your next work you you must remember to novelize for good and not evil, ma’am…
That said, if you choose to write something snarky, I’m so there…
On the basis that the best titles for novels are unusual ones, you should have picked something more boring.
If I saw that on your shelves, I’d HAVE to pick it out!
You know that everyone on the turnip truck is going to reach for ‘Inside Out Pork Bellies’ before anything else on the shelf.
Coyote, okay, I’ll use my powers for good – fortunately that doesn’t preclude a little well-aimed snarkiness. 😉
Harvey, that’s a very good point. I think it could go either way. I have a big fat book on my shelves called Salt. It’s a book about the history of salt. I bought it because it looked like the world’s most boring book, which struck me as funny at the time. (I’ve never read it, and I’ve never seen anyone else pick it up either.)
Grace, you’re right, I should NEVER have revealed the title! Duh.