Okay. Let’s recap. I started writing my own Alice adventure in September, around the 11th. 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:-
