Non-novel: Thoughts

I feel silly writing about a book that to me is not even a book. I’ve sent it to a few people with a few disclaimers:

I know it’s bad writing. Being able to get 55K words on paper and writing are two different things. My goal was to get the story on paper and hopefully reach 50K words. I did both of those. Quality writing was never really part of the deal although at times I did try. Other times I simply got words on paper.
I didn’t re-read the beginning of the book as I was writing so there are a lot of continuity errors. A few people have different names later in the book. Their past changes. It’s all a little sketchy at times.
I don’t want to give what happens away, but sometimes I don’t agree with what the characters say and/or do. I know that sounds weird as I wrote it but at times the characters did what they wanted to do and I couldn’t do much about it. Man, I know I sound crazy but it’s true.

I thought I would feel very accomplished at the end. But the past 18 hours or so I’ve really just felt not-enough. There aren’t enough words to actually publish it, the writing stinks, no one will like it. And really, I just feel like this is a beginning. It’s sort of like a piece of clay could be formed into a cube and yet, to turn it into a house would require the actual work. Right now, I just have a clay cube, something that a lot of people could do. Few could and will actually work to turn it into a masterpiece. But as a friend said, no matter what, you wrote a novel. Good or bad, there are characters and a story and now it’s on paper.

Just a few facts:

I started this end of October/beginning of November. It’s all Melissa’s fault. It took 7-8 months to complete.
Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series gave me hope that I could do it. Something about writing in first-person did the trick.
First draft is 55K words, 99 pages printed in single-space.
I still have no idea what I’d name it.
It’s a romance. I’m clueless on specific genres after that. I say it’s a romance but it’s more about the journey a girl takes fighting through her past to love someone in her present.
I listened to Clair de Lune a lot in the beginning while writing. Other than that, I wrote in silence because I could think better.
I saw a guy at Disney that made me smile because he reminded me so much of my lead male character. I was tempted to stop and take a picture of him.
I still don’t know what the lead character looks like. I never described her.
Scott helped me a lot at the beginning of the book. I remember one night we talked for hours about it. After that, we’ve barely talked about it. He says he may or may not read it. He hates to read.
I’ve sent it to 4 or 5 people to read. I hope they are honest but not brutal in their reviews.
I did my best brainstorming just before I fell asleep. I can’t count the number of times I rolled over and typed something in my notes on my iPhone. Actually, I probably could since I still have them all.