The end of the beginning- Novel update #3

Who would have thought it but somehow we have churned out a prologue and five chapters, all mounting to a word count of around 20,000! This means that after just a few months, we have completed a quarter of the novel and we are now able to reflect on the project as whole.

Just a few days ago I was sat down at my university household and I looked at the 32 pages in front of me with pride and surprise. However, on taking a sip of tea I began to feel a sense of dread as I realised I had to read it all. This is not to say that the thought of reading was a painful exercise. Not at all.

No, I felt dread in spending a good hour reading to discover that what I had read was a load crap.

But to my absolute relief, it wasn't.

It flowed, it developed as a plot, characters were clear and most importantly, it felt like something you could find in any book you'd buy from Waterstones.

Granted, it did have the odd grammatical error and the odd wrong use of punctuation but this was to be expected. In fact, I was surprised at how little the errors occurred.

And now, as I write this, I sit with the chapter 6 plan next to me, looking just as exciting as the others have done, having spoken to Ross last night about our ideas to go forward.

He, Ross, felt much the same to me in regards to how it is progressing and we both agreed to keep on as we have done. Feedback he had received from outside readers was promising and he enjoyed reading the feedback I had received from a former student from Coventry University that I had sent to him.

It just seems that at the age of 20 I have smashed out 20,000 words to which I can be ecstatically happy with and can say is from my own hard work. Moreover, consistently produce a piece of prose which continues with the same writing style and does not disjoint itself throughout.

So many times have I written something which loses itself halfway through and change in terms of style and levels of description etc. It might just be that now, by doing this project, I can say I have developed a style and actually call myself a 'writer'.

But before I get so caught up on what has been done, in the here and now it's just a matter of continuing with what I have done so far and before I know it, I will have a complete novel in front of me.

(ALSO, if anyone wishes to read it and give further feedback, it is possible. Just ask me on here or email me on mjdj99@hotmail.co.uk with the subject header READER)