My first novel... week 1

Well, like some knackered old nag with more hope than expectation I'm off the starting block book-wise. My first novel is in creation mode. Got the general theme worked out with a background to give it some pace and current relevance. Introduced one of the main characters in the completed draft of the first chapter and I'm now into the second chapter.

Found the experience really enjoyable so far, 'so far' being all of one week. Relatively easy to get the words down and ideas keep popping up in between writing on how to improve what's already down or how to start the next part.

What I am finding a challenge is making sure the tense is right. Keep slipping into writing as though it's happening now when I'm giving background information. Also find things get a bit of of order and have to be reworked, though I suppose it's good to get everything out first and then fine tune.

So I've written almost 1,400 words. Sounds good until you realised that's all of about 4 pages. Only another 78,600 words to go! At this rate it'll take me more than a year. That's not necessarily a problem since even great authors took several years to come up with each masterpiece. And that's doing it full time! I'm trying to fit it in between fiddling around with other things. Hmmm... yes, maybe you're right, some of those thing don't need to be fiddle with right now. I know if I don't get it done before Spring it'll be a struggle. Who wants to be indoors huddled over a keyboard when it's all sunshine and light outside? And the background theme I've hit upon means ideally I need to publish by Summer.

Ok, Ok... I'll be honest and say the first few hours were spent searching for an iPad app that did a word count and had a spell checker and I could have for free. All time wasted since I ended up back with the Quickoffice app I paid for when I first bought the iPad. Got a word count but no spelchekr so apologies for any typos. I'll just have to upload to Word on my laptop periodically and check content.

Anyway, the fingers are now tapping whenever I get the time... I'll just have to get more focused and use the couple of hours early morning to write rather than faffing around.

The idea is that when the masterpiece is completed I'll load it up as an eBook on Amazon for Kindle readers, of which there are more than a million. Can be done very easily and enables you to go direct to sale and get reader feedback without the agony of finding a publisher, as explained at Kindle self publishing.

I'll try and update progress weekly, if only to give me another incentive to get on with it!