Writing and Publishing Fiction

Throwing my hands up, falling well short of 50,000 word novel writing objective.

In the waning hours of July Novel Writing Month, I was approximately 40,000 words short of the contest objective. In an act of desperation, I attempted to make up the difference with another gimmick.

Unpublished Guy's July Novel Writing Month Progress

I already exploited a loophole to rewrite a portion of one short story to meet the novel writing objectives. My thinking at that time was that if I manually rewrote the text then that should count as new words. Now, I am not sure if I need to make that distinction. After taking a second look at the FAQ, I decided that it wasn't necessary that I manually rewrite my existing writing. The FAQ addresses using an existing novel for the July novel. It doesn't say anything about short stories. If I asked for clarification, I would probably be told that existing short stories don't count to the word count any more than novels do, so I don't think I will ask. Instead, I will write with a mindset of blissful ignorance.

Unpublished Guy's July Novel Writing Month Progress

As you might have noticed, my word count has been in a bit of a holding mode. It didn't help that my bipolar, RAD, PTSD, ADD, ODD daughter poured coffee into my laptop on Sunday. (My first "Sorry for not posting but PC/laptop was in the shop" blog inactivity excuse.) Despite this setback, I have broken through the three word glass ceiling, and I have a graph to prove it.

Inspired by the John Gardner Art of Fiction exercise, "Write a long sentence," here is my latest post, a single sentence story, Now I Have a Title. (Am I ever going to shut up about John Gardner and the Art of Fiction? No, probably not.)

Now I Have a Title

The fourth of July and four days into July Novel Writing Month. Four days of staring at a blank page wondering what font I should be using to write my novel. I settled on Verdana. I prefer sans serif, but it's not as overused as Arial.

Now that I have font selection settled, I have to figure out what the novel should be about. I suppose I could brainstorm, but I've decided to dredge up one of my older short stories and repurpose it as a novel length story. The particular story I had in mind was originally intended to be a multi-layered tome of symbolism like Moby Dick, except the source of my ambition was the epic poem, Jerusalem, by William Blake.

Some time ago, I signed up for July Novel Writing Month, which of course, is a writing contest identical to National Novel Writing Month, held in November. What are all of these novel writing months? The goal of these contests is to write a 50,000 word novel. The prize is having written a 50,000 word novel.

My specialty has been short stories, so this contest should be particularly challenging. I will be on a sabbatical of sorts as I focus my time and energy on this challenge. Don't worry, I will continue to post to Unpublished Guy, documenting my journey in the spirit of Captain Robert Scott's race to the South Pole and Sir John Franklin's 1854 Expedition to discover the Northwest Passage.

Also, expect to see several guest bloggers posting in their areas of writing and publishing expertise.