Writing

I never thought "writing a novel" could be so exhilarating. I'm not quite confident enough to not put that in inverted commas, but the fact of the matter remains the same.

You have to remember that my work consists in typing lots of words. My own words up to a point, but words that are the translation in English of other people's words written in French or Spanish. In subjects I know little about (enough to translate, obviously, but I translate a lot of medical stuff and I'm no doctor, believe me), some in subjects I dislike quite intensely.

But this, this "novel" thing, is only my own words, my own ideas, my own story. It's thrilling to see the pages pile up, the word count leap forward so much quicker than when I'm translating. When I write, I can spin out 1,000 words in an hour, sometimes more, and always probably about twice as much as when I translate (and, modesty pushed aside, I pride myself on being a pretty quick translator).

I'm not saying this "novel" is any good - I'm pretty sure it's probably crap, in fact, and I'm also fairly sure I'll never show it to anyone. But I'm enjoying writing it much more than I thought I would...

Yeah, I'm falling behind in terms of getting to 50,000 words by 30 November, but I'm not (yet) hopelessly behind. That might still happen - I've had relatively little work this week and stupidly didn't take advantage of that to get ahead of myself. And now work is starting to flow back in, leaving me with even less time to write...

But I'm determined. I want to finish this challenge, just like I'm doing my best for NaBloPoMo, too (12 days down, only 18 to go! And already better than last November when I fucked up right at the start). If you succeed with the 50,000 words thing you get a "winner's certificate", and if I manage to get that I'll be unspeakably proud of myself, even if I haven't told a single person "in real life" that I'm doing this (which makes finding time to write even harder - it has to be when I'm on my own, which isn't often).

And maybe, maybe, just maybe, if I find the time to edit the finished thing, I'll try and get someone to look at it (though I don't have the first idea who - a friend? a publisher? how do you find a publisher?). Who knows?