I’ve finished my novel. It is over 69000 words long, includes nearly 5000 unique words, and took me 15 months to write. Though I’ve had the idea for much longer than that. I started writing it by hand, but then switched to computer. Partly when I realised how many notebooks I would need to hold a complete novel. But also as I settled into writing and realised that I could find the time to do it. Writing by hand is much easier when you only have a few minutes at a time, as booting the computer and getting it ready to start takes half of that time. But once I found a routine of writing and gained confidence in doing it using the computer became more natural.

I am really proud to now be able to say that I’ve written a novel. Though I have no plans to edit it and make it available. While I really like the story idea, the characters and some of the dialogue, the rest of it needs alot of work.  It has very little in the way of character arcs, descriptions, setting, or showing of emotions, and the main character is very reactive and boring – for example she keeps making a cup of tea when I’m not sure what’s going to happen next.  So all of that needs substantial work in editing. For now I’m going to feel pleased that I got to the end, take everything that I’ve learnt from it to my next project while I hide this one in the bottom of my digital drawer!

I now understand the importance of outlining, planning, character interviews etc before starting writing! When I started this story I had an opening scene with three characters in my mind, and I struggled while I was writing it at points with where the story was going. So I know now that I am not a pantser and I will work on my plotting before starting to write my next one. Now all I need to do it decide which story to start next!