By: Blonde Two
I have been working, over the last few weeks, on the next Blonde publication. A slight departure from the norm (can you have a norm based on two?) Our next children’s book will have more words and fewer pictures. At the current count, that is 49,000 words and 5 pictures; it will also have some maps (something we and hopefully Ordnance Survey will be very happy about). 49,000 words sounds like a lot, but compared to other children’s literature it is a comparatively scanty count; Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for example has 76,944 words and some of them are magic ones!
I have (so far) done all of the right things. I wrote the story months ago and hid it away on a dusty top shelf (well a rather more prosaic Apple hard drive); I am now revisiting my creation and am happy to report that I still like it, that it still makes me chuckle and that the end once again moved me to tears (the first time tears might just have been relief at finishing the writing). Now I am prone to both chuckling and tears, and so must be careful not to assume that the story will induce the same reaction in other readers. I am also approximately thirty years older than the intended audience, but I still like pretending that Jelly Babies are real, reading ‘What Katy Did’ stories and eating snow, so maybe I have a valid opinion.
Would you like to read an extract? If you answer to this question is ‘no’ then stop reading now. If your answer is ‘yes’ then read on, but please be kind, Thomas (our hero) is an interesting lad …
The Non-Story of Ignatius Bowerman
“Now you might think I’m writing a story; but I’m not, these words are about things that actually happened. This is my non-story; I know it’s a non-story because:
1) I was there when the things actually happened.
2) I can’t do imagining.
As I walked up the drive that dimpsy morning, I saw some odd grey shapes but didn’t imagine they were something else. I walked past a grey car shape with windows, and then some grey sheep shapes with eyes. When I got to the end of the drive, I could see a grey Ignatius Bowerman shape.
(This first time that I crept out of my house, I didn’t know his name was Ignatius Bowerman, I just thought he was a tall man-shaped rock) …”
Bravo! More!
A norm based on two? Well Norm in the TV sitcom Cheers weighed as much as two. Does that count?
These wordage figures you quote for books have me bamboozled. I have never read a Harry Potter but my granddaughter (late teens at the time) was so besotted with what must have been the last title in the canon she queued to buy it and then read it while staying with us. The light under her bedroom door was never switched off and yet now you tell me this very fat looking novel may have only been 75,000 words long. How fecund I seem to have been: Gorgon Times is 103,000 words while Out of Arizona is 115,000. Blest Redeemer (unpublished at the moment) was 135,000 words until I pruned it somewhat. My present novel (Hardline Hope – working title only) is hovering at 12,000 and I’m still in Chapter Two. Am I guilty of running off at the mouth? I wouldn’t be the first time.
You are right to employ all those acts of superstition writers get up to; there are times when we need encouragement wherever it may lie. I was going to suggest you conduct a ritual sacrifice to placate the gods of publishing, using a jellybaby as the central character. Now I find you regard jellybabes as real so scrap that idea.
Ignatius gets off to a good vigorous start; kids are going to like it, I’m sure. Keep the faith, baby.
Thank you Robbie, am enjoying the process at the moment. For myself and Mr B2 the actual production has become as much a part of it as the writing. Font, size, pages, layout, feel … all really important. JK Rowling’s famous wizard books got longer each time she wrote a new one (198,227). I stopped reading them when they got too heavy to hold in bed, but how wonderful to have children keen to guzzle down so many. My story is short, but try as I might, I can’t find a place for more words.
Oh! Disappointing! I thought Jelly Babies WERE real – a sort of mutation between a human and a jellyfish!