To kill, or NOT to kill ...

Or maim. Or scar. Or annihilate?!

Settle down – this is just the writing game after all! I’m merely asking a purely hypothetical question as I reach the 50,000 word mark of my book and realise a few things:

1. One year on, I really, really love character number one, still. She is funny and quirky and completely insane. I really can’t wait for her to fall in love with one of the many leading men I have lining up outside her hospital ward, replete with surgical masks and automatic spray cans of Glen 20 to save her from an ebola outbreak. It’ll be like Pride and Prejudice on crystal meth!

2. I also still really, really love character number two, also. She’s still funny and fragile and completely insecure. But if I’m honest, at the same time I really hate her. As the words spill onto the page, it turns out she’s nowhere as amiable as she seems. She’s got massive issues of her own that I’m kind of tired of thinking about because how much crazy can there be in one chick-lit novel?! Character two blames character one too much. She’s completely and utterly selfish and wears too much mauve. Her drug habit is getting ridiculous and her hair is just too blonde!! If someone’s gotta go, I say it’s her! The other one might be two steps from needing electroshock and a padded cell, but at least she’s got heart, God love her!

Not to mention a completely awesome collection of Choos!

However, they say that conflict is the basis of all great writing – and I have a Masters degree that equates to the sum of this theory. As well as life experiences that are by no means a part of this book, but we all live and learn. And it would seem that I have spent many months writing conflict aplenty, but with no resolution. Folks, it’s time for resolution!

Because I need for this story to be over (I have a PhD appointment at nine o’clock!)

For a year now, my story has been humorous and hostile. It’s been chick lit with a cynical edginess that pushes it out of the chick-lit genre and into somewhere else – hopefully, somewhere else that will make it also marketable. It’s been so much fun to write, but a little unrealistic somehow – and not in the sense that I’m writing about a character who only goes on dates with men wearing surgical masks has a deeply irrational fear of catching ebola on a daily basis!! But in the sense that I’m ignoring a lot of the serious issues that I’ve actually created in my text. It’s not all fun and germs – somebody has to get hurt. A lot. And now that I’ve unfortunately caught onto this, maybe I need to lessen the edgy and amplify the gravity of some of the issues.

At the very least, I think my story could do with more grit. I think my story could do with more vengeful acts. I think my story could do with some veiled candour. Ha ha. 50,000 words in and character two’s time just might be up. Life’s a bitch, but it’s ok – she was never real!