Going from Notebook to PC

Following all good advice, I put aside the first draft of my novel when it was complete at the end of November '11.

In late December I looked around for a suitable novel text editor, and on the advice of the lovely David Hewson I chose Scrivener from Literature and Latte. It's brilliant. I should probably stress that David's advice wasn't actually addressed specifically to me - although I have met hit a few times and he really is very nice.

So having gotten Scrivener set up I dug out my notebook again in January and started the process of getting the novel typed up. This is NOT a simple process of just typing the words - this is a complete re-write of the story, which is useful given that I now know what happens!

But progress is slow, especially as it has to be fitted around a full time job. But here we are on 22 March and I've just passed the 20,000 word mark. I'm guessing that this is about a third done, and then I get to start properly editing it and generally making it all make sense.

And the really good news? I don't actually hate it yet.

NaNoWriMo 2011

I know this looks like a late post - but it originally appeared over on Walking on London when I should have put it here...
I've spent the month of November carrying this notebook and pen pretty much everywhere with me. I've been taking part in NaNoWriMo - the National Novel Writing Month - the point of which is to write a complete new novel of at least 50,000 words during the month. Obviously that means a first draft, not something of publishable quality.



It's been interesting. Some days it was really easy to hit the average 1,667 words needed, on others I tried, but missed that target, on still more I didn't even try because something more interesting had been happeneing.



What I can say now is that I have written a novel?



This is something that I have tried to do before. I have the first third, or maybe half of a novel that I tried to write after my creative writing course in 2009. It stalled on a difficult scene and stayed stalled because I had no real incentive to go on. I also have the opening of two or three other things that I've wanted to do none of which have made past the first few pages, or have expanded beyong the initial short story. Why? No real incentive to go on.



So, when I saw this challenge to write a novel in a month, a whopping 50,000 words, I went for it.

And it worked. The novel is finished. I expect it will get much bigger in the second draft and then smaller again as I tidy it up - I'll be aiming for something around the 80,000 word mark, the traditional 300 page target - I really don't agree with the whole 700 page novel nonsense - a book should be 300 pages, a song 3 minutes, a movie 90 minutes.



There can be exceptions to this rule of course - but I'm not exceptional. My book will be 300 pages, like the songs I used to write were 3 minutes and if I ever make a movies it will be 90 minutes.



Oh - and did I actually make the 50,000?