Yeah, my blog post comes with an image today. I updated my version of WordPress and am playing around with it, so enjoy this highly exciting screenshot of my novel in Scrivener. Yes, it starts with a death and a funeral, but I swear it’s not depressing. Mostly.
It’s somehow been another 3 months so I’m updating on my progress. I’m not really sure how it’s going – it feels like a bit of a mess at the moment. But, as the blog post title suggests, I’m persisting in throwing words at the page and hoping that I can eventually form something from them. The total word count’s now at 52,969, which isn’t massively more than a few months ago, but that’s because I’ve also been rewriting and deleting bits. Still, there’s a long way to go. I’d like to have a first draft done by the end of the year, but I’m not feeling confident in that right now. It’s taken me a full year to get it to this point, so, yeah… Longer-term, I’m seeing my 40th birthday (September next year – eep) as the goal for getting it in to a readable and shareable state. Not ‘finished’, but close enough to inflict it on people. I’d like to be able to ask some friends to read it and give me feedback at that point. It can be your birthday gift to me.
For now, I’ll just keep on with the words throwing. I’ve become quite aware that it’s currently lacking in likeable, sympathetic male characters. It’s mostly awesome female characters (yay), though it does also have some unsympathetic female characters, so that’s a kind of balance? The male characters are mostly background at the minute, though. I’m sure there’s something about art imitating life in that…
Anyway, I’m going to go write a scene where a ‘Not All Men’ bloke gets a drink thrown in his face. If nothing else, it’s quite a cathartic writing process.