NP: 90,000 words!

I've just made it to 90,000 words on my novel. Writing is now a joy. For many thousands of words it wasn't. That's not to say that I'm sitting down every day to write, far from it. But I do write every week, sometimes only once or sometimes more than that. Maybe in the future I will write every day but that's not a goal I'm forcing.

Over the past 90,000 words and three years, I've found that I, and Codee, respond well to approaching writing as a form of play. We sit down together and we see what happens -- no pressure, no wild expectations, nothing but getting to spend time with my protag and his mixed up perceptions of how things are. Most times it's a positive experience where he takes over and employs me as his scribe, rattling out his thoughts, expectations, hair-brained schemes and actions to get what he wants. Other times it's just a frustrating patch of dead air where he sits there with a blank face and empty brain. He's a smart guy, but occasionally he's just... not. Or maybe it's me that's not smart, but let's not go there. ;-)

If I've learned anything over these past 90,000 words, it's not to take myself or Codee too seriously. He's flawed. I'm flawed. The novel is flawed. I aspire to literary greatness, not as a means by which to clamour for fame or money (there's enough people already out there doing that), but as a means by which to relate the story that I've committed myself to telling. I'm not self-deluded or arrogant enough to think that I'm doing the story true justice at this point in time. I've got too much yet to learn to be able to say that.

I set my standards high. I enjoy reading a variety of different stories, but there's a difference between a masterful writer and a good one. I think I'm good. I can hold my own in a writing group without blushing beet red with shame, but I'm not masterful. Nowhere close. One day I will be, but I hope I never know it because the minute that I do I will lose my creative edge.

On a different note, I can't imagine falling in love with another character like I've fallen in love with Codee. Having said that, I'm sure I will. That's for the future and my next novel about a guy who lives on the coast. I don't know his name, or his face, or much more about him other than he's not a fisherman but might be a diver. Codee won't let me find out and more and that's the way it should be. One novel at a time.

At this point I must also publicly convey my thanks to Em, my writing buddy, best friend, mentor, coach and Leland's scribe. She, like I, has been working on a novel for the past three years.

Writing a novel is hard work. It's a commitment that many start and few finish. There are statistics out there that suggest that many people who start out writing a novel never make it past the first 10,000 words.

Em and I have made it past that, by a long way! If it takes another six years to finish our novels, those will be six years well spent. I hope it doesn't take that long, but I won't be disappointed if it does. Good things take time. Worthwhile endeavours take time. Our boys are worth it, no matter how much we sometimes think they aren't.

As for how long my novel will get. I don't know. I will write until it's finished and then I'll go back to the beginning and start over in the first of what I envisage will be two full editing phases. That will take time, but while I'm editing I can let diver-boy out of his cranium cage. Who knows what he'll get up to.