I've written a novella!

I've accidentally written a novella.

Let me explain. I wanted to write a serialised story. Vocal lends itself to this very well with the way that you can publish instantaneously and my idea was to write a seven part story, releasing a new part every day over a week so that there was no delay between chapters and the momentum was always there. It seemed like a good length.

I'd had an idea for a long time and I wanted to do it justice so I didn't want to write and then release that part once it was complete. I wanted to write the whole thing first in its entirety. I can write on the hoof quite well, I've discovered, but it's stressful. If you've got an inordinate amount of time and it's your sole focus, then it's not but who has that luxury these days? Professional writers maybe but I doubt it.

Anyway, I'd learnt from writing serialised stories in 2024 that I didn't like the pressure of the writing under time constraints and so, this project had to be done differently. I needed time to think and plan and to make sure that it was good to the best of my own judgement.

Tomorrow, I will release the first part of "The Hoarder". I've been working on this for a couple of months, on and off. I like where I've gone with it and I think where I've left it, at the end of Part 10, provides an ending that rounds things off but also gives scope if I wanted to revisit my characters and extend the story in the future.

See? Ten parts when I thought I'd only write seven. And I don't want to put readers off because I know that we're all short on time and it's all about the under 5 minutes sweet spot, but each part is a good length chapter. They're all between 1000-2000 words, hence novella.

I've found this quite hard to do and I much prefer writing one off pieces. However, I had a greater idea of what I wanted to do with this and so, following what I had in my mind has made it easier to complete - but it was still harder than writing a short story or a poem. I have reread it and done this over and over again, looking for continuity errors, changes in tone that feel off, smoothness of flow. It is very time-consuming and sometimes, it's been difficult to gauge my writing because I'm too close to it and I can't see it as clearly. This is why it's taken so long, because I've had to move away from it to come back with fresh eyes and make it better. Doing it uninterrupted has also been tricky. I'm still not sure I've got it right.

Editing feels like applying Polyfilla to a rough surface to make it smooth and as a book reviewer, one of the things that I am most conscious of is narrative flow and how, if this isn't right, your reader gets thrown out of the narrative like the literary equivalent of an emergency stop in a car. It's difficult then to resume the journey because you're always waiting for another jarring moment with that driver (or author).

I've tried to avoid this. I may or may not have succeeded. We'll see.

So. Tomorrow, part one. And I'm going to open myself up to the critique here, which I do with some trepidation but I'd like to know what you think and the only way I'm going to know is by asking you to read it and tell me what you think. I'm not so precious as to think I've written a prize winner but I would love to know what you liked about it or what you think needed improving or didn't feel right to you.

If you don't feel comfortable doing that in the comments' section then let me know and I'll put my email address out there and we can communicate that way. Or if you're not happy to critique, that's cool too.

Either way, I'd love it if you read it and gave it a go.