A Question...

This is me conversing with a barn owl, a few years ago when I spent a delightful day on a ‘Birds of Prey Experience’ that Andy had given me for my birthday. The owl is saying, ‘It was THIS big!’ and I am replying, ‘Oh really?’ (It is also in the days of my being a slave to the hair dye. Makes me wonder if I ought to return....)

Anyway I’ve chosen this photo because it is pertinent to a question I have to ask you.

Since being in the state of withdrawing from society, I have been busy, as you know. I have been especially busy with writing. Now, you might think, ‘Oh have you REALLY?’ because I’ve been a bit lax in dishing up episodes of ‘Clive and Min’, my current Work In Progress. But what I have also been doing is some pretty heavy editing and additional writing on ANOTHER novel that I wrote a few years ago, called ‘Night Owls.’

Some of you more established residents of the West Wing of Much Malarkey Manor may well remember ‘Night Owls.’ It was produced in the frenzy of a NaNoWriMo - 50,000 words in 30 days of write, write, write and don’t look back. (This was also in the times of me teaching full time, so goodness’ knows how I managed to achieve this embryonic script, but it should remind me how much I can write when I knuckle down and crack on despite being up to my eyeballs in other stuff of life.)

Anyhoo.....I have this script of ‘Night Owls’ which I rediscovered when poking around with some memory sticks to see exactly what was on them. The script stood at just over 50,000 words. Today, it tipped over to 62,000 words and I’m only two thirds of the way through the rewrite, so I am thinking by the time I’m finished it could well top 70,000, nay 75,000 words. Which is the size of a decent novel. You know, the kind you can bowl through in a few evenings if it grabs you, unlike, say ‘A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu’ or ‘Ulysses’ both of which I started decades ago and will never finish, because life is, frankly, too short.

My question to you, then, is this. If I was to self-publish ‘Night Owls’ (which possibly might be re-titled ‘Amazing Grace’ - would you purchase a copy for the purposes of raising money for charity? It’s a story about four women - Grace, Steph, Nina and Annie - who form a common bond over their habit of waking at 3 a.m, and set about finding and executing various activities and projects to occupy their waking hours. A sort of triumph over insomnia. It is funny, poignant, and inspiring.

What do you think? It seems a pity to finish it and have nowhere for it to go.

(P.S I have also rediscovered two more almost but not quite complete novels to continue working on. There’s ‘Indigo Anscombe, Violet and Blue’ which is about three quarters complete, and ‘Merrily, Kissed by an Angel’ which is about half way there, although I know where it is going. Turns out I could be a writer after all.)