I’ve finished Life: Immaterial. I typed the last sentence this morning and then told everyone I knew. I partly finished it because I was meeting the NaNoWriMo deadline, and partly because I was getting far too involved with my characters again. In fact, I almost called one of my friends by a character’s name the other day. A sure sign that the end is nigh.
At the writer’s group meeting last night some poor soul asked me what the themes of my book was and I surprised myself by explaining to him what the theme of all my books are. It didn’t sound too bad and definitely sounded like I knew what I was talking about! It did make me think more carefully about genre. Two things lately have made me consider my writing style: Will Self and a text gender decoder. I have been reading Will Self’s books and the narrative voice is not unlike my own (except better, obviously) and the text generator told me that I write like a man. Not that I mind, but all this is pointing rather away from chick lit and towards general fiction.
Life: Immaterial has turned out to be a discussion point for many people. The main theme of the book is ‘you can’t choose your family’. The main character is a middle aged woman who thinks. Some have called her bright, some have called her interesting, one person even called her intolerable. This just highlights the subjectivity of of the reader and the flexibility of the interpretation.
So another novel finished. onwards to three months of editing and submitting!