Accidentally Writing a Novel
Hold on, let me just dust off this journal of mine, here. Sorry for letting it get all moldly; I haven't been posting any stories, and all of the other things I'd normally post about are getting out of my system through Unsheathed, so I haven't had a lot to say.
Well, that's all sort of changed, now.
In the late months of 2009, I got an idea for a very strange but fun story. My plan was to write it out and get it posted by Christmas or New Year's as my big year-end capstone. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I got a lot of good feedback on it, too (the phrase "extraordinarily weird" came up, in a positive sense). It all seemed rather promising.
One particular piece of feedback, though, was that as neat as the idea was, the story itself felt more like the scaffolding for a larger piece. Something more than just a 15,000-word short story. Something closer to a novella. Or maybe a novel.
I looked at the story and bit my lip. This reader had a point. And I kind of hated him for having a point, because it meant I had a whole lot more work to do.
He was right, though. The more I looked at the concept, the more I realized that it warranted more than I'd given it. It didn't just want to be this wacky experimental piece. It wanted be brighter characters and a more epic story and more fully fleshed out ideas. It wanted to be something bigger, and I was going to have to make that happen.
So, for most of 2010 so far, that's what I've been doing. I am by no means a fast writer (much to my own chagrin), and it hasn't always been the easiest story to write (again, I think "extraordinarily weird" is a good way to think of it). On the whole, though, it's been fun, and I've been surprising myself with all of the (weird) ideas that have grown organically in the process of my taking this short story and turning it into a novel.
Earlier this week, I hit the 50K milestone. It's probably going to end up somewhere between 60-70K in the end, and so it'll be a short novel, sure, but it'll be a novel, one that I never intended to write, and yet which has been very exciting to see come together. I'm pretty sure that, at my current clip, I can get my first draft finished within the month of May.
After that, it's anyone's guess. I don't have it lined up for publication anywhere, and I'm not working with any deadlines in mind. I'm just writing it, seeing what happens, and having a fun time doing it. One way or another, I can say that you guys will see it, whether it sees print or not.
I'm not going to say what it's about yet. I will tease you by saying that my working title for it is Summerhill, and that the main character is some sort of anthropomorphic canid.
And so there you have it. I've had readers telling me for the better part of a decade that I ought to write a novel. I just never thought I'd end up doing it without planning on it.
Well, that's all sort of changed, now.
In the late months of 2009, I got an idea for a very strange but fun story. My plan was to write it out and get it posted by Christmas or New Year's as my big year-end capstone. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I got a lot of good feedback on it, too (the phrase "extraordinarily weird" came up, in a positive sense). It all seemed rather promising.
One particular piece of feedback, though, was that as neat as the idea was, the story itself felt more like the scaffolding for a larger piece. Something more than just a 15,000-word short story. Something closer to a novella. Or maybe a novel.
I looked at the story and bit my lip. This reader had a point. And I kind of hated him for having a point, because it meant I had a whole lot more work to do.
He was right, though. The more I looked at the concept, the more I realized that it warranted more than I'd given it. It didn't just want to be this wacky experimental piece. It wanted be brighter characters and a more epic story and more fully fleshed out ideas. It wanted to be something bigger, and I was going to have to make that happen.
So, for most of 2010 so far, that's what I've been doing. I am by no means a fast writer (much to my own chagrin), and it hasn't always been the easiest story to write (again, I think "extraordinarily weird" is a good way to think of it). On the whole, though, it's been fun, and I've been surprising myself with all of the (weird) ideas that have grown organically in the process of my taking this short story and turning it into a novel.
Earlier this week, I hit the 50K milestone. It's probably going to end up somewhere between 60-70K in the end, and so it'll be a short novel, sure, but it'll be a novel, one that I never intended to write, and yet which has been very exciting to see come together. I'm pretty sure that, at my current clip, I can get my first draft finished within the month of May.
After that, it's anyone's guess. I don't have it lined up for publication anywhere, and I'm not working with any deadlines in mind. I'm just writing it, seeing what happens, and having a fun time doing it. One way or another, I can say that you guys will see it, whether it sees print or not.
I'm not going to say what it's about yet. I will tease you by saying that my working title for it is Summerhill, and that the main character is some sort of anthropomorphic canid.
And so there you have it. I've had readers telling me for the better part of a decade that I ought to write a novel. I just never thought I'd end up doing it without planning on it.