Novel in Progress

I thought it might be interesting - for me, at least - to have a diary record of my current novel-in-progress. You know, just in case it becomes a huge bestseller I'll be able to look back on its infancy with affection and pride.

So, here's to the 8149 words that have currently made it onto the computer!! There's another 500 words or so in a notebook (although that figure is always increasing, because I can't stop writing this particular story), and by the time I've typed them up, they'll be about 750 words.

Hmm, I know... it's quite short for a novel. I'm expecting the full, on the computer beginning to end story will be around 13,000 words (roughly chosen because I like the number 13 - 10 didn't seem enough, and 15 too high). Then I'll wipe it all off and start again, re-writing from a print out of the whole document. Deleting it forces me to re-write, rather than just add in random sentences which wouldn't increase the word count by very much and make the whole story feel disjointed. Re-writing from the print out means I'll scribble all over the document, then type it again, making further additions and changes as I go.

I once read of a writer doing this very same thing, although I can't remember who he was. He was clever and had a secretary to decipher his work and retype it for him, before he did the same thing again to the fresh manuscript. I remember he used green ink. This apparently could happen countless times before he was happy with the final product.

The current story is being written in short chunks at random which means that when I print it out, I'll lay it all over the dining room floor and literally cut-and-paste it into order. I'm really not suited to the 21st century.

Just so I've got something to write about next time, I'm not going to say what the story's about... yet!