There will be no more chapters in book one! I will no longer be sitting up until stupid o’clock in the morning, knowing that I’ll probably only get a couple of hours sleep before I wake up for the bus, determined that I “just need to finish this chapter”, and get just another thousand more words, and then I can sleep. No more trying to think of ways to make the chapters as long as possible without them being ridiculously boring, and no more introducing new characters every few chapters (yes, I have to write books two and three, but they’ll have less new characters than the first one by far). I have finished book one… kinda.
I say “kinda”, because I’m not thrilled with how the first few chapters turned out – they’re very short, compared to the later ones, and really lacking in any description of any kind, which is why the word count is so low when I’ve been writing up to 4k-long chapters in the past few days. To be honest, I’m quite proud to have finished it within the time I have – I started it on January 2nd, if I remember correctly, and it’s finished on the 29th, which isn’t bad considering I’ve also had exams and coursework due in (the coursework went great, the exams I’m not so sure, but that didn’t really have much to do with the writing and more with the fact that I’ve been ill and a question came up that we really didn’t think would come up for my Drama exam), and I also have a boyfriend, a social life, a theatre group and I like to just chill out and watch television sometimes too.
So, what have I done today, to celebrate actually finishing my first ever book (kinda)? Well, I went into town with my boyfriend, remembered that it’s Sunday so very few shops are actually open, bought myself a nice scarf in the sale, got some sweets and then stood and watched cars trying to get through the mounds of sand that piled up in the harbour when we had those high winds and storms and stuff last month. And now we’re going to have a lovely roast dinner and a nice evening with my boyfriend, before I traipse off to college tomorrow (joy of joys).
January is nearly over, and although I usually hate January – last year was, of course, an exception in many ways – this year, although college has been rubbish as usual and I’ve been ill-er than usual, I’ve spent most of the month with Daf, it’s been really productive – I wrote a book! (kinda) – and I have really enjoyed it, to be honest. I’m excited now to see what February, and the rest of the year, will bring – hopefully lots more writing, lots more happiness and a lot of excitement! I’m quite tempted to start editing now – I should probably take a couple of days off, otherwise I’ll end up with tendonitis again from this almost non-stop writing – but I’m really excited to make it into a novel I can be really proud of.
the life of a moomin 