12.20.2009

A Pat on the Back

I started working on a chick-lit novel during the fall of 2007. I am happy to say that tonight I finished the first draft. It's almost 34,000 words--about half of which were added during the past month.

I don't know how I feel about the story at this point. It is silly, simple, and purposeless in many ways. But that is how I feel about most chick-lit. If you are lucky, you come across a book that gives you a gem of wisdom about life. But mostly, it is a marvelous, often mindless, diversion from the everyday.

Regardless of how meaningful or meaningless my story is, I am proud that I followed through and finally finished it. That is something I can celebrate, even if it languishes on my thumbdrive for eternity.

I have two more weeks to add at least another 60,000 words of descriptions, backstory, and dialogue. And I want to strengthen the hook. That is certainly a "heavy lift" but I'm thinking that it will be a fun and rewarding challenge.

5 comments:

Organica said...

I'm proud of you, and of course I'm dying to read it! Maybe I'll devote some of my time during break to continuing my story that I sent you for our writing group...

Heather said...

Congratulations! That's terrific! Would you let me read it? Please?
I would love to - and I can give as much or as little feedback as you like (depending on what you want).

Organica said...

We could do a 3-way novel trade, where we are only allowed to read as many words of hippos's novel (and each others' novels) as we provide her of ours...that would spur us to write a lot over the holidays, even if it's not great stuff. ;)

Or perhaps this is too ambitious. I'm just looking for some personal motivation! :D

Hippo Q. said...

I'd be game for an exchange.

You two are my resident readers/editors so you can definitely expect an email from me at some point. But first, I need to give it a full scrub. I'm not looking forward to reconciling all the inconsistencies of what I wrote in 2007 and what I wrote this month.

Heather said...

I like the idea of the novel trade! I haven't worked on mine in a couple of years though, and it's unfinished, so it's not really worth reading yet.

But I look forward to seeing yours Hippo! :)