so let it be written...

...so let it be filed somewhere and ignored. 

I have finished the novel, it felt good, at 2:30 this morning when I word counted and it was over 50k, needless to say there was no one around to share my momentary joy with.  I did however eat two jaffa cakes and shimmy around the kitchen while pouring my orange juice. (oh, the extravagance of my celebration.)  I also removed the "working title" from the end of title, as I figure a finished novel probably needs a finished title.

I'm a little unsure on the length, as fifty thousand words is not terribly long, but maybe it will grow a little in the edit.  As the story is basically complete, I don't want to extend it any at the end, and don't think I could.  This has left me a little stumped, I like short reads, Prisoner of Zenda, Gatsby, 39 steps, Tolstoy's The Cossacks, To have and Have not.  All short books, but lets face it novel length seems to have grown, so, do I try to lengthen it or accept that the writing of it has been enjoyable and never ever send it off to anyone?

Anyway, one thing is for certain, I have completed nanowrimo, which is what I set out to do, it was enjoyable and challenging, so I'm pleased as punch to have done it.  The word count of the first draft was 50,189, although it does have 39 chapters, as I rather like short chapters like in early Tolstoy as it lets you move around the adventure a little quicker.  It's not really literary fiction, it's not deep and emotional, it's just a bit of fun that whizzes you through an adventure in Imperial Russia. 

It probably has a million and one grammatical errors, and I'm fairly sure no publishing house has published this style of book for about 80 years, but it's been fun!

Next step is re-reading it for any glaring errors.  Fun, fun, fun.

My NaNoWriMo page is over here, where there is a short, and possibly rather silly, excerpt.