Last night was the last write-in for National Novel Writing Month. My novel Iron Horse is resting for a few days before the first read, so I used the time to do some free writing and get a tattoo…
Don’t worry, Mum. It will wash off!
It is finished (or maybe it’s just begun).
This morning at 12.23, the arc finally came to a close, and everything I have been working towards for the past 26 days is completed. The last section was a struggle - a story that seemed to end almost 2000 words from the close - but there were plenty of loose ends that needed to be tied up, and now the first draft is done.
It’s a Western called Iron Horse, set in an imaginary mining town called Babylon, deep in the Old West of America.
After three weeks, I’ve written 42,000 words of my NaNoWriMo novel, and discovered an important thing. I know the plot - what is going to happen - but I’m still learning about why it happens and how. But of these are much more interesting (and difficult) questions to answer than what.
Why has it taken 32 years to write this first draft?
I don’t think I ever really started it. There were lots of false starts, but I never began something knowing that the next day I would be continuing it, and the next, and the next. I sometimes gave it a day or two, but never this long. It’s true that if you turn up to your story and keep adding to it every day, eventually it will find its own form.
