Will This Novel Ever Be Written?

I have a title, a genre, characters, a setting, and some ideas. And at the moment I have something like 30,000 words written. So, I’m writing words, in fits and starts, with Thursdays being when the most of this novel gets written.

Thursday is when my writing group happens, and I use prompts for our writing exercise during the writing group, and the prompt for homework to be presented at the group meeting the following week.

So I read the prompt and I think about how this new prompt will fit into the novel I’m writing. Slowly …

This is certainly not the method of a writer who wants to write a book in six months, it’s probably going to take the rest of my life to get it done, at the rate I’m going. I thought it would be easy, writing a Cosy Murder Mystery. And the actual story comes easy enough.

Sort of, anyway. The plot points needed for this particular genre aren’t natural to the way I write, I think that may be my problem. I love the characters and the setting, and some of the ideas I’ve had. It’s just difficult getting all of the things that have to happen, actually happening …

But I still feel I could get it moving, if only … If only I had a month, where the only thing I had to do was write this novel. But there are always other things that feel more compelling to me, than the writing of this novel …

The fact that I already have people wanting to read this novel, you’d think that would be enough. But there are always other things to think, and do. Some are must do things, others want to do things.

So I’m not guaranteeing anything, I’m just hoping it will happen. Sometime. This year? Next year? When I’m sixty-four? Who knows? I sure don’t. The idea of being a Cosy Murder Mystery writer was so appealing, and I thought it would be easy.

But it is nowhere near as easy as I thought it would be. And I’m more a poet and short article kind of writer, and my longer books have been not genres with well known rules that the readers of them expect from the author. I can do that kind of book.

But I’ve tried romance writing, and just couldn’t write that, is murder mystery going to end in the same way, with me saying no, I can’t write that? I have written more murder mystery than I ever did of the romance writing style, and there is a bit of romance in this Cosy Murder Mystery I’m writing …

But if I never finish this novel, at least I’ve given it a go, and the world won’t end because I don’t get it written, and published … I’m getting my new poetry collection published later this year, and that is definitely a book I feel I can be proud of!

So maybe I should just stick to writing poetry? But I love the characters in my novel, and I want to know what happens, so … Who knows?