Writing a novel can age you by ten years and can add ten pounds to your waistline.
When you start to write a novel you want to bury your head in a big bag of Haribo at the thought of writing 80,000 words from scratch.
Plus, sometimes you read over your last chapter and you realise that although your main character had started the conversation with his mum in the living room, somehow they are both now in the garage with different clothes on, and different hairdos. So back you go through the pages, raking through the mistakes, effing and blinding like a grumpy old man who has found a load of cat turds on his front lawn.
Even though you have read and reread your scribblings several thousand times and YOU THINK there should be no more mistakes, some little ungrammatical blighter will show up. At this point you’ve eaten your weight in hobnobs and you’re seriously considering lobbing that laptop out the window.
And sometimes your plot is going SO WELL until you realise that your character ‘would never do that’ or that the baddie isn’t all that bad, after all. This can lead to a plot change and a plot change can generate so much fear that one’s bowels can even get a bit ‘trembly’. In extreme cases new underwear is needed.
So if you’ve started your novel I hope it’s an enjoyable experience and the above does not apply to you.
And, hopefully, your underwear remains clean at all times.
Thoughts of a curly-haired Essex bird 