Writing My Novel

 So I just saved a draft of chapter one of my novel on here, (and various places). My sense is it isn't "working" adequately for a novel and yet I have worked hard on it over the last couple of weeks, fitting in time here and there and getting crabby with people because my actual life, emotionally, doesn't matter to me so much in comparison to it so I don't like to have my mind taken away from it. However, I did my best and I'm happy with the beautiful bits of it I've expressed. I have to remind myself I haven't ever written a novel before, so how can I just write one that quickly works, that at all works, that is good? . Well, it's not strictly true I haven't ever written a novel before as I tried to write one in my twenties, but, I wasn't happy with my efforts then and soon gave up so to all intents and purposes this is the only novel I've ever taken on as work. The novel's story,  it's characters, are absolutely familiar to me, and vivid to me, but it's getting them through in text into the novel experience of a literary plot that I struggle with. I guess I have to trust the process. And alongside that I have to hope I actually have the available time over the next couple of years? Couple of years? To finish it in my spare time. It may be publishable standard or not. If it's publishable standard I think the good advice to follow would actually be to find an agent now before it's actually written? But I'm too busy to go into that with all I have to do maybe and I'm also writing as much for pleasure, as a hobby, and I don't want that to change. I gather I could put it up on some fan site for free as a free share, (will research that option too), as well as on here. I don't want to upload it here or anywhere until there's at least a kind of skeleton of the plot worth of scenes and chapters. Not as just a set of preludes and a single -  think finished - chapter one, and lots of scenes that I don't know if are advancing the plot or not. I want to have written enough to upload it with the message - this is the story and where it's going and where it's going to end. Here - on this blog as it's only a blog? The craft of novel and fiction writing, I did read on it in the far past when I did want to write a novel so know how to but - that stuff no doubt missed a lot that's relevant to now as it's past era, twentieth century stuff. We're now in the era of plotless novels. Of less strict boundaries in novels. Different possibilities. Just writing this before my daughter and I get up to start the day. A none writing day probably and none writing week probably as I have a lot to catch up on after having the flu last week.

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