It hit me for the first time last night while I was talking to Liz that I am nine days away from finishing the manuscript for a five-hundred page novel.

A FREAKING NOVEL. I WROTE A NOVEL. I mean, this should be obvious, considering the fact that… well… I’m a writer… and the reason that this blog exists is because… I… wrote a novel…

[Hayley Anne Perkins has trailed off and wandered away awkwardly to make tea and wait for the crickets to stop chirping.]

But it didn’t really hit me that I have written a novel.

There’s still a LOT of work to do — revisions, and then another set of revisions, and then a target-demographic test reading (any volunteers?), and then probably more revisions… but still: I’ve written at least the skeleton and some obscure organs, like the spleen, of a novel for which I feel a lot of pride.

When I was in seventh grade, I wrote my first “novel.” I am exceedingly, exceedingly glad that the one publishing house that I sent it to rejected it (though kindly, because I was only twelve). It was called A Bag of Marbles and it makes absolutely no logical sense. It was A Grand Manifesto on the importance of racial tolerance (I was a white, suburban seventh grader in a white, suburban middle school) that used a lot of very stereotypical names and descriptions for its characterizations. There was a Grand Forbidden Love Story aspect that my parents had me cut, because it did sort of come out of nowhere.

It actually probably wasn’t that much worse than some recent bestsellers, but at any rate, I’m very glad that it doesn’t come up on Google if you search my name or anything.

The name came from this passage, which I still sort of vainly like, though I will never use –

She opened the bag and the marbles spilled out onto the floor. I could tell at first glance that these were really special marbles, and I could see why they’d cost $150. I reached down and picked up a clear, red marble with a golden dragon imbedded in the center.

“These are part of a special collection called ‘Around the World’,” she said, picking up a saffron-yellow marble with an ivory monkey, “That’s the China marble. I really like that one. Here,” she said, dropping the yellow marble in my hand, “This one is India.”

We lay on our stomachs, looking at the marbles. Their beauty astounded me. There was emerald green with a shamrock for Ireland and periwinkle blue with a marble Eiffel Tower for France. Japan was perfectly clear, like a crystal bubble, with a tiny, tiny, pink origami crane in its inner depths. Botswana was a rich, grassy green, with a small silver elephant inside that looked almost as though it had been born, not made. Every country had it’s [sic] own beautiful, unique marble. We sat in silence, just fingering the cool, shining, clear stones. I especially liked the Hungarian marble, which was paprika red with a pysanky egg (one of those intricately decorated, gorgeous Easter eggs) inside.

“I love how they’re all so different,” she said, “But they all go together perfectly. They mix, but you wouldn’t think so at first glance.”

Deep, man. Deep.

[Hayley Anne Perkins wanders away again, wondering if she's ruined her own chances in the writing world by posting the above passage of seventh-grade moralizing.]

As I was waiting for the response from the publisher on A Bag Of Marbles, I fell head over heels for a certain British book series that had recently been published in America, and started to plot out a seven-book YA fantasy series involving a lot of magic and mystical herbology and fantastic beasts and where to find them. But it starred a princess, so clearly, it was so like, totally not Harry Potter.

Princess Rosalind was very small and dark-haired and pale with bright blue eyes, thank you very much, so again: she was obviously not just the female, royal version of Harry Potter. She wanted to learn magic, but was not actually a witch, so her powers would be limited to potions (hence all of the bizarre herbology. Which actually just turned into a list of made-up edible herbs. Which just devolved into a menu [see "Om Nom Nom," 3 April 2009]).

Most of the magical herbs had names that I only later came to realize were just obscure real words that I had read somewhere or another, like “yardang” and “macrodont” and “geas.” The aforementioned Fantastic Beasts were very similar to Michael Scott’s idea of prehistoric religious beliefs on The Office:

Maybe there’s some sort of animal… that we could make a sacrifice to. Like a giant buffalo. Or some sort of monster… like… something… with the body of a walrus… with the head of a sea lion. Or something with the body of an egret… with the head of a meerkat. Or just… the head of a monkey, with the antlers of a reindeer, with, ah… the body of a porcupine.

I also spent so much time laying out chapter titles with Very Clever Puns or Clues To The Solution Of The Mystery in them that I forgot to actually figure out anything concrete about the plot, or the characters, or the mythos of this world that was really a lot like the Bristol Renaissance Faire, only with wizards.

There was also a character who had been in existence since the Big Bang, and took one hundred human years to age one year. She had lived forever, and could remember endless lifetimes and stories and languages.

I never named her, and I had actually forgotten that she existed until I began writing this blog tonight. But it’s interesting to see that the deformed sister of a germ of one good idea began in seventh grade.

Have you achieved anything lately that you’ve been working towards since childhood?