No, I’m not quitting.

Somewhere along the line, I started blogging a novel. Well… actually, I just posted the first chapter of a novel. And, let’s be honest, I didn’t really intend to do much else besides entertain a few friends. I wasn’t a Science Fiction writer. And, I certainly wasn’t a fantasy writer (like some people have accused me of being). And since we’re being honest… the novel in question… well, it probably wasn’t any good, anyway.

The response I got was positive and encouraging. I got feedback. (You may have heard me mention how rare quality feedback is.)

And then, there was a second chapter, and a third. There are a lot of chapters, now.

And real, live people were reading it. It was actually a reasonably well-organized, somewhat entertaining story.

And at some point, I started thinking of the experiment as a book with an actual future, somewhere out in the real world.

So, now, I’m thinking about options.

The first thing that occurred to  me–before A-to-Z, and the last month after that–was that this blog is going to look awfully empty, if I ever decided to pull the novel off of it. I think it’s filled out nicely, since then.

I also realize that the rough draft I’m starting out with is **ahem** somewhat bigger than one book. At some point, regardless of business decisions, the thing has to be split up into book-sized chunks. I have to figure out a stopping point.

I’m at about 36k posted on the blog right here, right now. And I’m not particularly happy with the progress I’m making. I’d like to have my first book-sized chunk edited and ready for submission/publication/future opportunities sooner, rather than later. And definitely sooner rather than much later.

And, being quite honest, I’m not sure that revising–and polishing, and honing–in chunks is the quickest way to go.

Although knowing it’s going to be read does give me a clear, straightforward “What next?” mentality.

I’d also like to keep the Work-in-Progress portion of the blog small, limited to fellow writers. I’m considering password protecting the WIP posts. That way, I can keep posting the novel as I get the bugs beaten out, and also work on building a more general readership.

So, thoughts?