ALICE'S ADVENTURES AT THE POLES - FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS COMPLETED

Okay, it is done. Sort of. If you’ve been following the blog then you know that it’s been over a week since I finished writing the first draft of the text of “Alice’s Adventures at the Poles.”. I needed to make two illustrations to the final chapter to take me to my target of forty eight illustrations. I made one on Monday, this rather charming (to my mind) illustration of the mole who is a sweeper in the South Pole Post Office. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday I was writing up reviews of Mastermind and UC for my other blog. By Thursday I had itchy and tired eyes, so I left the other illustrations for yesterday.

Now, this meant I only needed to make one yesterday. Which I did. This mean that I had here illustrations for chapter 12. Still, when I had made the forty eighth that meant the last chapter only had 3 illustrations. As it is, chapters 2,3 and four only have 3 illustrations each, but since then every chapter has had at least four. So I did what will be the illustration at the end of chapter XII. Then I thought – forty nine. Just one away from fifty. So I drew an illustration of the octopuss, a recurring character who makes no fewer than three separate appearances in the story. Here’s the illustrations.

So, am I done with the making, then? Well, no, not quite. The text needs editing and possibly revising slightly. Then there’s the illustrations. I’ve tried to be quite hard on myself as I go along, rejecting and re-doing where necessary. I redrew the second illustration in the book because the original was on cream coloured paper, for example. But there are still a least a couple of illustrations that I think I need to redo. It seems a waste to come this far, and then accept pictures where I think I might do better.

In the coming week, I guess I’ll start to think about my feelings about the whole project, and look to get this down on paper by the end of the month (I’m away on holiday next weekend.)

ALICE'S ADVENTURES AT THE POLES - NARRATIVE FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE!!!

Okay. Let’s recap. I started writing my own Alice adventure in September, around the 11^th. It took me until the beginning of December to write and illustrate 6 chapters. The speed with which I wrote the chapters varied – I can remember taking the best part of three weeks on one of them, but generally they were taking between 10 days and a fortnight. Then we got to December.

The last time I posted, six days ago I had completed Chapter X. I promised myself that I would take it rather easier on Chapter XI and my actual words were “I have no intention of rushing through the chapter at full tilt again,”. Yeah, right. I finished writing Chapter XI on Wednesday, New Year’s Day, and immediately started to write Chapter XII. I produced two illustrations for Chapter XI by Friday evening, and made two more this morning. Then I finished writing Chapter XII. Which means, dearly beloved, that I’ve finished writing the whole of the narrative. Well, the first draft, anyway.

Okay, so I was always going to read and revise the whole story again anyway, but the speed with which I’ve completed the last couple of chapters worries me a little, so I definitely need to go through them.

For the record, then. The current length of the novel is just over 46000 words – which is quite a bit longer than Alice in Wonderland. Which is absolutely not a criticism of Carroll’s book, which is above criticism, just a comparison.

I have completed 45 illustrations, but not yet illustrated chapter XII. My target for the whole novel was 48.John Tenniel made 42 illustrations for Wonderland (and another 50 for as Looking Glass)

My first draft has 19 poems in it. I think that there are 19 poems in Wonderland and Looking Glass combined – 11 in the first book and 8 in the second.

My first draft does also include 180 footnotes which add just over 11,000 words. Self indulgent – probably but writing them gave me a great amount of pleasure.

I don’t think I want to write about what I’ve got out of writing the story and making the illustrations until I’ve illustrated the last chapter, so in the meantime, here’s he illustrations to chapter XII:-