Two novels...

I'm in the middle of an interesting writing experiment, which is one of the reasons I haven't blogged for so long. I've been working on a new novel. In fact, I've been working on two new novels. One of them is recognisable territory for me. A certain city, a particular lifestyle. Maybe even a couple of familiar characters. The second one is a bit of a departure. I'm enjoying departing. It's always fun to try new things.

The newest thing of all is that I am writing them both at the same time. Having a go at each in turn depending on how I'm feeling at the time. I've planned them both, one in more detail than the other but, then, that's the departure and it's the kind of book that needs more structure. I've started writing both too. I'm expecting both to round off somewhere near the one hundred thousand word mark. To top it all, I've just started a new and intense job that is extremely worthwhile and, at the same time, very challenging. This is emotionally rewarding work and I am glad I'm doing it but, at the same time, it has wiped me out this last week and I was quite unwell by Friday.

So, that's the experiment. Can I in and out of two extremely different novels without either of them suffering at the same time holding down a real job in the real world? As far as the writing goes, so far, so good, but it's such early days that I'm not submerged in either yet, and not taken over by the characters and their stories. Maybe it will take longer for that to happen, a bit like the way a child growing up bilingual takes longer to learn to talk in either language. The thing about a child growing up bilingual, though, is that she will have a better command of language in principle in the end, when she learns to talk, and find learning new tongues much easier than the average person.

I watched with interest this November's National Novel Writing Month and nearly joined in but wisely changed my mind at the last moment. I did think it might be motivating to have something going on that tracks my progress, though, so I've decided to blog my word counts.

Let's call my new novels Familiar Fred and Departure Dan, for the sake of this exercise. Here are the scores on the doors.

Familiar Fred 7235
Departure Dan 2419

A domain mes amies. Or perhaps a few days after... If I ever have the energy to blog again, that is.