Hey peeps,

Allow me, if you will, a brief advertisement/plea for help. As you may or may not know, NaNoWriMo is drawing to a close, and so it's about time to get the writing out there. I'm in the middle of editting at the moment, but hope to be done with that soon, or at least as done as I'm going to be without being sick of the whole thing.

After this, I need feedback about it, as so far I haven't had any (there was a plan to give people access as I wrote it, but that fell down rather quickly in case I found I had blatantly given the game away, or wanted to move clues around, etc) as no one has actually read the little beast. I'm going to do a limited self-publishing run, so I can distribute it to those who have already asked for it and to pretend to my family it is a real Christmas present. Thing is, there are clever numbers games one plays here to get them at a decent rate, so I'm going to end up with a few more than I need.

So: anyone want a copy? I would prefer people who read a fair bit of crime and are familiar with the rules, as I'm currently lacking the types who are used to trying to break the code, but a first-come-first-served basis works equally well. So, if you promise not to try to steal it and publish it yourself and would actually like to have a look and maybe give feedback (it's not hard, questions like "When did you figure out whodunnit?" and "Which character do you hate the most?" will be about the level) then please EMAIL ME with your address, as this is a public post.

Ta!

So today is day 9, and I have broken 50,000 words on NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately, this does not mean that I have won. The competition says that during the course of November you have to write a novel of at least 50,000 words from scratch. I have my 50,000 words, but notably not a novel.

Bugger.

Well, that's not entirely true. Nowhere in the rules does it say it has to be a good novel. The very premise of the competiton, in fact, is that one must get the words down and out of your head, regardless of the quality. Which is probably just as well. All of thsi last week, I have been pulling a fat wet rope out of my forehead and encouraging it to stick to Google Documents, which really can be infuriatingly slow at reacting to the keyboard at times. Still, at least it saves it off site, and can be grabbed from any computer. The point being, that the ending can be rubbish and, as such, I am able to declare that I have before me a completed novel using the world's ultimate writing cop-out. Words 5,447 - 5,589, where the book terminates, read as follows:

( Cut for NaNo extracts and examples of really, really bad writing )

NaNo is still coming! And, thankfully, I seem to have reached a little platform where I can sit and survey what has happened so far. Gone are the days of leafing hurriedly through stacks of journals, trying to find out the availability of certain types of cigarettes, or which train lines were laid when, or how work-teams for iron foundries were compiled in 1778. Gone, too, are the hours of careful characterisation, descriptions of Hair, Height and bHuild unique enough to allow everyone to be distinguishable, before throwing them into untested situations to see how they will react. I have also bid a fond farewell to the agonising with the plot, which started as an ugly iron lump containing The Idea, then hammered out to resemble a jagged mess with sharp bits that didn’t look like anything, re-melted, re-formed, re-hammered with a bit more care and a bit nicer a hammer. The damn thing has finally been tempered, smoothed and polished (although I still live in fear that soon I will run my hand over it casually and find a bit jagged bit, which will tear my writing fingers open).

To summarise: I think I’m about ready to start. I had intended to do chapter-by-chapter summaries, but have since abandoned this idea. I think plotting the next two chapters as we go along is a much better idea. Obviously, I know where it’s going (it’s a murder mystery, after all, and I’m not so vain as to Christie-ise it and not decide on the murderer until the final chapter) but exactly how it gets there is still its own little mystery. But what now? Aside from reworking the dire opening chapter, I think the best thing is to test my lumpy sculpture and see if, after all the abuse, it still fits into the mould of a “mystery”.

( Ten Rules of Crime Writing )

P.S. Still haven’t fixed the names.