My First Novel

I am 33 941 words into my first novel.  It's really hard.  Really, really hard.

After resigning from my permanent position with Ed Qld earlier this year I felt a little bit uneasy and lost.

I could no longer say I was a teacher and was forced to answer nosey questions such as 'what do you do?' with "I'm a housewife".  I am not saying there is anything wrong with being a housewife, I am just ashamed to say it because I am a terrible housewife.  Terrible beyond words.  There is always 6 loads of washing to put away and my floors always need cleaning, even when I've just cleaned them.

Earlier this year I decided it would be easier to buy new blinds and trick someone (Kristy) into installing them (whilst deceitfully leading people to believe that I helped her somehow) than it would be to dust the current blinds.  I'm a terrible, terrible housewife.  

So I needed a new profession.  Being the lazy, multitasker that I am, I decide to kill two birds with one stone and write a novel (which is on the on the list of things to do before I die).  That way I would be able to proudly proclaim to nosey check out people that I'm a Novelist whilst also ticking something off my list.   I'm writing a science fiction novel, which is a VERY surprising choice for someone who does not like science fiction. I have never watched a single one of the Star Wars movies or read a single science fiction book.  So it's brand new territory for me.

After gleefully editing my Facebook work information from reading 'Teacher' to 'Science Fiction Writer' I set about my working out the setting and characters for my new book.

I'm about 6 weeks into the book and have written 12 chapters.  I write everyday and spend anywhere between 30 minutes to 5 hours, depending on the amount of research I need to do in order to write the chapter I am working on.

I constantly switch from between LOVING my novel and imagining myself being interviewed on Ellen after the book has been made into a highly successful movie trilogy to absolutely hating my book and wondering 'what on Earth am I thinking?'.

Last night I had one of those nights where I was really swamped and felt like it was a crap idea and was going nowhere.  Hoping to find some motivation I decided to google novelists to find out what they get paid and how to be a successful one.   Novelists, especially first time novelists, rarely make much money at all from their book.  It's lucky that my motivation for writing this book is to tick a box on a list and have a more interesting career than 'housewife'.  I also realised that I would have to stop promising the kids that when my book gets published I will buy them a horse they can ride and pay for riding lessons a couple of times a week etc.

One authors website, that I stumbled across, advocated building up your social media following.  My blog has 14 followers and I have 22 twits following me on twitter, which is much less than what he recommended (he himself has millions and HAD millions before he even published his first book).

So now on top of writing my novel I am going to be tweeting my head off and hashtagging everything (apparently other people who hashtag similar things may start following you) and blogging as often as possible so I can build up my followers.  How this system works I have no idea.

Writing this blog is really difficult.  I think I can only write so many words a day before my words become finger dribble, spewing across my keyboard.

So, after posting this I'm hoping to have a few more blog followers and I will try hard to think of things I can tweet to make myself a more popular twit.

Sorry this is such sucky writing.  I've been writing all morning and am now devoid of any inspiration or creativity.

B xx