Novelling: the latest

People keep asking “What’s the latest on the novel?”, all wide-eyed and breathless and grinning. OK, maybe I’m exagerating their interest with the ‘breathless’ there. Also the ‘wide-eyed’. And usually they’re tight-lipped. And when I say ‘people’ it’s actually more like ‘my Mum’. But still, I’m getting a little tired of having to disappoint them. Actually, it could be that they’re not that disappointed. Or even interested. As I write this my eye keeps getting drawn to the ‘Unpublished’ button in the top right-hand corner of the WordPress window. You’re not kidding, WordPress button. You said it.

My editor has said she will send me her notes for the final brief edit by the end of November. She’s moved it from June to August, then to October, then to beginning November…you get my drift. I know, I am an ungrateful fiend. Also probably an ungrateful friend, but that’s another story. It’s been explained to me that they don’t want my first novel swamped by the stacks of other stuff coming out. Which is fair enough, and I’m left feeling like a particularly whiney child, which I am, people, I am. Begone, foul ingrate! I shall go and swing my pants again that such an esteemed publisher has bought my novel.

Sue, my lovely agent, has encouraged me to concentrate on my second novel, like the sensible and professional person she is. That plan, however, wasn’t going so well until I hit on NaNoWriMo and then kaboom! Words have never poured out of me so quickly. As long as you don’t count that time Hilary Brown nicked my Hello Kitty coloured pencils kit and I found it in her school bag. I almost got kicked out of the Violent Girls Armed With Big Sticks Lacrosse team for my innovative use of language (they never really knew why I was there in the first place; I think there must have been an outbreak of plague amonst the more talented players. OK, the talented players).

So I’ve been writing lots. Lots of what could technically be referred to as ‘mostly crap’. This usually depresses me, but I’ve managed to quiet my OCD internal editor and the result is pretty astonishing. Ideas have been flowing and my two little protagonists are mutating like scary alien life forms developing at an alarming rate.

I should probably confess, though, that while I was ahead of the word count game for a full two weeks, I’m now hopelessly behind because of real life-and-death events. Like my obsession with Twitter.

Current NaNoWriMo status? Epic fail, my friends.

The second novel has a working title of Adrift, the main characters being two young brothers, mixed-race lads dumped by their parents and brought up in a string of foster homes on the South coast, just after the Second World War. Their names are Joe and Harvey Gayle.

Say hello to the nice people, boys.