Working on My Second Million
By Janet Woods
This morning, whilst gazing at the framed book covers on my office wall I began to calculate in my head the words I’d written over the last seventeen years. At the moment I’m working on my second million. And to think that when I first started writing I didn’t even know how to take a typewriter cover off, let alone use a keyboard.
After counting the first few books my brain said, duh! (numbers do that to it) so out came the calculator. The total was a staggering 1,400,000 words in sixteen books. That’s right. One million, four hundred thousand! That’s only the approximate number of words in my published novels and short stories, though. It doesn’t include the how-to articles, nor my unpublished trainee novels hiding in the cupboard. Between them, those would probably raise another half a million words, many of them “that” and “he/she said” words.
It’s said that one should write about what they know. If that’s the case I’ve been a busy “one” for the following are some of the events which have happened between the pages of my books. Murder, rape, adoption, abduction, forced marriages, witchcraft, divorce, fire, suicide, slavery and torture. I’ve also handed out a couple of floggings and wrecked a ship, losing a full complement of crew and passengers and with only the hero surviving.
Without an anaesthetic I’ve assumed the role of surgeon, removing a bullet from a hero’s skull and amputating a villain’s leg. Only the hero survived. On the upside of my doctoring I’ve safely delivered several babies. My physician skills have cured tuberculosis, scarlet fever, pneumonia, ague and smallpox. They’ve failed with those diseases too. I’ll leave you to guess which of the above events were written from personal experience.
Being a bit beastly, I’ve killed three horses and have featured large dogs called Gruff, Sam, Rebel and Rufus, plus two smaller dogs, one named Spot (after his spot) and Victoria (after the late queen of England). The latter two were siblings and Spot was dognapped by a villain. In one book a downtrodden mule kicked his master (a villain) who staggered off dazed and then fell into the pig stye. The porcines chewed on his leg (hence the amputation) and bit his nose off. As you can see, I do like my villains to suffer before coming to a sticky end. None of the above events are random, though. To each, a purpose. I never write a book that doesn’t end in a satisfying, well-rounded manner.
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