The first novel I ever finished.
On finding crit notes from twenty years ago.
This week was mostly spent writing and reading and plotting and planning and I really want to shout about what I’m writing but I also don’t because I don’t want to psych myself out.
As I wrote that, the office chair I’m sitting on slowly sank down to its lower setting. That was a bit disconcerting.
Anyway! Google keeps telling me that I’m running out of storage space, so I started deleting stuff from Google Docs (also I have two accounts - one in old name and one in new and I’d really like to get rid of the old name one, but there’s just so! much! stuff! omg).
Obvs I can’t delete anything without reading it first so I’ve been reading a LOT of my old writing. And this morning I found something I didn’t even know I had.
Back when I started writing, I was a member of a forum called WriteWords.1 It’s where I first made writer friends, many of whom I’m still friends with now. You know fabulous Zoe Lea, right?
I met Zoe on WriteWords!
The thing I found this morning was the discussion about the first novel I ever finished, the novel that got me my first agent, and my first book deal. It was called FORGET ME NOT. It was never published (and never will be).
I’d been reading the comments for a while before I noticed the dates: from February 2006 to July 2007. TWENTY YEARS AGO.
I’m sure as shit not going to post the lot because it’s EIGHTY-FIVE PAGES, but I will share a bit over the cut. It’s so interesting and enlightening (and odd) to see how my writing process has changed (and hasn’t) in TWENTY YEARS GOOD GRIEF.
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