Who here has tried to write a novel?

I wrote a novel when I was in primary school. It was about a whale that had a radioactive harpoon fired into it, causing it to become enormous inside and then go on a rampage of destruction.

"The march to the penitentiary takes only minutes."

I've got two right now that I'm working on. The one I'm working on for lit idol goes like this:

Some girls of her generation kept hope chests, Trudy had her box of dreams.

It's shit but I just started it this morning.

Yes.

"A shot rang out."

One actual one and one in theory to follow up.

The first sentence is under review and the plot/scenario is under wraps.

C'mon, how daft would I be?

From my abandoned novel, Freak Flag -

"The shaven headed lout slammed his drink down on the table, brought his legs up onto the chair which he was sitting, and used them as leverage to execute a remarkable backflip, snarling as he sailed into the air."

"I was sitting in a bar, minding my own business, when a bloke behind me rotated 360 degrees and landed on his feet. He snarled and continued his drink which had made the journey with him..."

It did actually continue pretty much like that. It later turned out the man he landed in front of (the hero) was a giant living teddy bear, and that the snarling man was actually a large breasted pop singer in a robotic disguise, and that the pub he was in was in fact a set for a music video (and all of the other people in it were being operated by members of the Jim Henson Creature Workshop).

Lot of drugs round your way, eh?

From my long-abandonned first attempt at a novel:

Down there, on the soft west bank of the river, Ace Gabberly lay dead and I was one my knees. I wasn’t praying for Ace’s soul, I was digging a shallow grave with my hands.

I wrote "Shit From An Old Notebook" for NANOWRIMO last Novemeber. It started,
"I was sitting alone in a triorama of some punk kid's room circa 1985."

From No Rhyme Or Reason
"I'm going to fucking kill that fucking bouncer."
I was the bouncer, but I was not fucking. And the only person who got near to being fucking killed was the bloke who thought it was smart to say he was going to fucking kill me within earshot of my position.

From Hume's Missing Shade Of Blue (aka The Feeling You Get When Your Saturday Guardian Comes Without The Guide).
The disappointment of receiving her notice was tempered by the memory of the quadraplegic tethered to the back of her speedboat, spinning and skipping across the lake. She had never realised that someone could say "yahoo" and mean it, and that piece of knowledge had even made the plice investigation less painful.

I ain't saying a word 'til the manuscript's back.

Another abandoned abomination, The Life of Pie:

I ate the whole thing.

I'm still trying, but everything seems like cliche bollocks.

"The matchbooks slide and then fall. The mouse vanishes into the thicket of wires and dust under the bed."

Being nearly unemployed (well, not really, but I've given up the writing part of my job), I'm going to go back into fiction writing wholehearted as soon as I can tear my ass off the sofa.

Anna seems to be talking about our place. Out, damned mouse.

Everybody has mice Suzy, I don't know a house in London without them. If you want some small comfort a baby mouse, about an inch long from nose to tail, got trapped in our sink. I made my housemate catch it in an oven chips box and take it to the park over the road.

Live in the sky, we don't have mice - they can't climb stairs!

B...b...but Suzy and Ed don't live on the ground floor either, nor does my friend Alice, nor Dave. I am fully expecting mice with tiny fold away wings to emerge.

(Sorry, back to novels)

Anna, your second last post SO could be first line of a novel.

We live really in the sky - fifth floor. And a building less that thirty years old not riddled with teeny tine rat runs.

The fifth floor is not the sky. 12th floor is minumum height for sky-status.

I'm on top of one of the highest hills in London too M'lud.

okay then

(mind you I guess its not the height above sea level that foxes the lil fuckers).

My opening paragraph was rather auto-biographical:

"She said to Kalem, 'baby just one more time, I know you've given me 456 orgasms but even Emma Bunton needs that 457th'. Kalem looked around at the cheap hotel room, warmed only by the love that the couple had brought to it, and shrugged. He was bored and tired now and needed something to eat. 'Sorry love' he exclaimed. 'I've had my fun and I'm off to catch a movie. Maybe some other time eh?' But Bunton knew he would not return, although her gratitude for the encounter with this mysterious stranger would last forever".

Because I am old enough not only to have a misspent youth, but also a misspent middle age, I have accumulated almost the full set of miscues and mistakes, including the half-finished novel. It's not the usual trashy semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel either. It's a historical novel set in ancient Athens after the loss of the Peloponnesian War, with a rousing bloody plot. It only needs another 125,000 words or so. With pluck and luck I might finish it. Then (O happy day!) I could collect the full set of rejection letters to go with it.

Anna, I really like your opener, as it is poetically modulated and nice.

Here is mine:
"It was a dark and stormy night, while a dog barked in the distance."

Here is mine:
"It was a dark and stormy night, while a dog barked in the audience."

Three Nanowrimo efforts so far.

This is the first sentence of the novel I will never ever finish writing:

"Levi's eyelids strugglingly lifted to look straight up at the tiny pinprick of dying sunlight at far end of the narrow vertical shaft he had minutes? hours? days? ago fallen down."

"An ill wind blew that morning. People scurried about their daily business, keeping their heads down, avoiding eye contact. The summer was long gone, the cold bleakness of winter had its grip on everyone. None of this mattered to Dexter. Where ever he was, and whatever he was, it didn’t matter."

I might start writing a new novel.

Is Dexter a mouse?

I've started two, one is fiction and at this time I can't disclose any info but the second is called,
"unending thoughts of a trobled mind"
it starts with,"I find Myself thinking of Me, and wondering Why..."

Mrs Nordic finished the first draft of her second short novel yesterday. She is delighted.

In progress.

"One morning, Jane Jefferson woke up to find a giant trampoline in her backyard."

"I got on the bus with my mum and went into town and something about the Hobbit"

I found this in an old primary school book of mine and was very confused because I HADN'T READ THE HOBBIT AT THAT POINT.

Didn't some ILXor actually have a novel published? If I remember correctly it was either Neudonym or Tep... Of course I can be wrong.

So far the tally seems to be:

Tep has published a few books with small presses
Marcello's Church of Me is coming out on Verso in the autumn
Mark P was given mad props for his Bjork book in the Guarniad a few weeks back
Mark S's If.... book commissioned by BFI
I edited an anthology called Typical Girls a few years back and I have a short in another anthology, Retro Retro.
There are others, I'm sure, but I'm out the door on way to meeting.

Never do this: self-Google for reviews only to be told your effort 'is not a short story' by some jumped-up little sheyite on one of the smaller reviews sponsored by a piddling college you've never heard of, because it contradicts your blinding review from the Times which says your work is better than Joyce Carol Oates' submission in the same book. Hmm, which review will affect my future career? The East Buttfuck Journal or The Times?

Oh yeah I forgot about this one...

http://www.cafeshops.com/go_quick.8139055

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