57,000!

Word Count this morning: 0
Word Count now: 1056

I apologise for this obsession with my now-missing novel. You need to have had a novel stolen from you to understand. Not just any novel. One you were writing, had been writing for years.

When I started it I didn't have a typewriter, so I started it longhand in a hardcover notebook I had owned for ten years. When I eventually got a typewriter, the logical thing to do would have been to stop working longhand, and start using the machine. But as I watched the blank white sheet of paper I had inserted in the typewriter (at the top of the page I typed: "CONT'D FROM LONGHAND") slowly yellow with age (while remaining blank!), I knew that this novel was destined to be finished in longhand. So I ploughed on. Some days I wrote 50 words, other days 5000, some days I took out a thousand words, other days none, but I ploughed on. And then, two years, and (a net figure of) 57,000 words later, everything is gone with the wind.

But I have put that behind me. I swear I have. I have started work on Novel 2.
No, don't wish me luck.
Luck didn't keep my 57,000 words...