Today, the oft-hinted Satan novel hit exactly two thirds done, and even though I’m well aware it needs a lot of editing, this makes me immensely happy, because it’s the least troubled novel I’ve ever worked on. No huge gaps, no stumbles, nothing I’m convinced is shit. I live in hope that this is something I can either sell to agents/publishers or persuade myself is worth the effort of self-publishing.
Also, I haven’t hit the wall of telling myself I have no talent, because thanks to the reasonably successful antics of Hobson & Choi over at Jukepop, I’ve got a good strong round of positive affirmation coming in for my fiction. One of the big problems with working on a novel is that you get stuck in this inner world where you only have yourself and your book and the inner walls covered in your own dark scrawl.
The internet can help with this, as can a writer’s group if you’re so inclined, wherein you read them your work and they give you feedback, in return for your returning the favour. Yes, it’s terrifying at first, because exposing your work to other people always is – it might be less intimidating to just expose yourself, to be honest – but once I got past that initial fear, it became infinitely preferable to just slashing onwards and hoping it works out. Even listening and mulling over other people’s scribblings can help bring ideas out
.For more on why writing groups are a good idea, the excellent Chris Brosnahan (organiser of the group I attend) has written a blog post.
Otherwise, as I say, there is always the internet for affirmation via likes/retweets/votes/magic stars/whatever the kids are using nowadays.
Anyway: point being, even though it isn’t finished yet, two thirds seems like a lot of novel to me so I’m allowing myself this small celebration. The final glorious chunk, as I mentioned last week, I aim to write during NaNoWriMo – more on that in future blog posts.
But before that particular mega-storm kicks off, I get a couple of weeks in which I can work on some non-novel projects more intensively than usual, plus do some hard planning for the final third. Score.