Okay, so after many, many months of supposed research, general panic, swearing, avoiding phone calls from my agent about it, internet surfing and talking about starting I have, finally, started my novel. And when I say started, I mean I started yesterday. But I have actually written five thousand actual words. And they’re actually good. Alright, semi-good. I’m pretty certain I’ve ripped off my beginning by accident (don’t you just hate it when that happens?) and that my character is named after someone in a bloody band (I must figure out which one), but otherwise I think it might actually go somewhere.

Of course, that all depends on whether my agent will read it, because the novel I actually pitched to him wasn’t actually the one I started yesterday. I wrote nearly ten thousand words of the other one, but with the risk of sounding like a luvvy or some kind of porn-addict, I JUST WASN’T FEELING IT, MAN. Every time I called up my document I got this kind of heart sinking feeling. I mean, this book was for CHILDREN. I don’t do children – I like disutrbing stories of maiming and general despair combined with twisted Clive Barker dystopian visions. Even I’m not freaky enough to subject that on children, even though my boy seems to have some disturbing reading habits himself already – check out this freaky cover on a book he brought home from the library. I’m scared just to open it, never mind read it.

So now I’ve leapt from a children’s novel in which twin boys live in a castle, to one in which an ensemble of very different characters attempt to get through a Strange Apocalyptic Event (it’s a secret in case you hadn’t guessed, hah). Luckily for me, my agent has read this as a pitch doc as I originally conceived it as a feature, before I realised it would need to be approximately 12 hours long to fit in everything I wanted to squish in there. So it won’t be a complete surprise to him, though last time he saw it his exact words were “I worry about you.”

So why am I telling you? Well, it’s just to make sure I get the bastard finished to be honest. I figure if that I write 2000 words a day AT LEAST, every day, I should get this finished(-ish) by the end of the year. Of course, we all know that’s not going to happen, but the shame should at least ensure I’ve broken the back of it and at least mean I have a first draft ready for some serious editing around the end of January. Or February.

So, first of October, we have 5000 words. Just another 115,000 to go.

Wish me luck – and keep poking me on how far I’ve got!