Two Little Words

I typed two little words that made me very happy yesterday. They were 'THE' and 'END'.

Yes! I've finished the first draft of my novel Tybalt & Theo. I had been aiming for 80,000 words, but ran out of story at 75,000. I started it in October last year, although I didn't work on it every single day, and at one point (just after halfway) had almost convinced myself that I couldn't finish it. I worked on it for 68 days, producing an average of 1,100 words a day, although there were nine days when I wrote 2,500 or more. My best daily total was 3,369.

So, what's next? Well, I'm going to print it all out and take a red pen to it. And then write a splendid query letter and detailed synopsis to send to literary agents. You might think the synopsis should come before the book. That's never worked for me: I have written two or three as the book has progressed, but what happens in the book is nothing like what the synopsis said should happen.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that the first one-third of the book is on the peer-review website authonomy.com. It's had almost 300 very positive reviews, some of them from published writers and professional editors. So I know it's not a pile of tosh, and it does what it was intended to do, which is make people laugh.

However, writing a good book has never been a guarantee of getting published. And in the current economic climate, publishers are less willing than ever to take on unknown authors. But you've got to try, haven't you?