A Writerly Confession

This is  little bit embarrassing, but I have a confession to make. I have been writing a book, a thriller in fact, for a long time. A very long time. I think about my main character sometimes, and especially when I’m at my weekly writing group, where I usually use the writing exercise prompt, to write some more of my novel.

I have many of these little snippets of my novel in (not much) progress, each snippet anywhere between 200 to 1000 words or more. If I gathered up all of the snippets, I might in fact have enough words to make a novel, in word count, anyway. But mere words do not a novel make. You need a coherent plot for that.

I have a kind of a coherent plot, I know what is happening, so some extent, and I have an idea of how it is all going to go. I have characters I love, and I have a snippet (or maybe more) of a love interest. I’ve written bits about the main character chatting to the love interest character, and I have little bits about other characters, including the bad guy.

This novel in progress is a thriller, did I mention that? Anyway, I have a bad guy, I have secondary bad characters, I have an interesting surprise person from the main character’s younger years, I have a wise older character, and a flamboyant and lovely transvestite.

So I have all of this stuff, but what I don’t have is the will to get on and get a thriller written – I have a plot idea, with the mayor being a bad person, doing terrible things, but I’m not feeling the passion for writing that story, because I know that a good thriller has many words, and I don’t feel like writing one story with all of the necessary words. I have ideas for dead bodies, though, and other interesting ideas (I think they’re interesting, anyway).

Now though, I’m thinking about and have done a tiny bit of looking into the idea of writing cozy mysteries, rather than thrillers. Cozy mystery sounds twee and sweet, doesn’t it? I have fond memories of reading many of Agatha Christie’s books and gee, I wonder if I could get into writing them?

It seems these kinds of books have become bigger these days, and while Ms Christie may have gotten away with a mere 40,000 to 60,000 words, publishers these days are looking for at least 65,000 to 90,000 words … So much for an easy little few months to write my mystery … Ah well, given that I already have a setting, and characters, as well as some ideas, and interest in the project, who knows.

From further investigation, it seems a Thriller Mystery could/should be in the 70,000 to 90,000 word range … So lots of words, but hey, I’m a writer, so I love words, yes? Yes, in moderation, that’s true. A further thought, as I sit here typing, bearing in mind that my m main character is a youngish, but not too young woman with a career, I could think about a genre cross Chick Lit/Mystery novel or series of novels.

The idea of having a series of books with my main character/setting I already know much about, is certainly appealing to me. I’ve been writing about this person and this place for I don’t know how long really, five to six years? maybe longer, not sure. It’s funny, I am using a different bag than usual today, and I found yet another snippet about young Meredith, and the town of Talloola, where all of my action takes place!

So, there’s my confession, I am going to abandon my book because of lack of interest. But my interest in the people in the book, and the town it’s set in are certainly still very strong, so that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on them. So don’t worry Meredith, there will still be much more action to happen for you! You and young Travis, who I’m very fond of too! And who wouldn’t be fond of a dark haired, blue eyed, very buff man, who knows how to keep his favourite lady happy!