NOTES:
I had to invent the post-apocalyptic adult animal-fantasy comedy genre for this one. It's a deliberately unmarketable concept. Up until 1997 I could happily sit tapping away at some inane fan fiction for four or five hours, not be exhausted at the end of it, and look forward to doing the same the next day. It was a very productive time, even if what I wrote wasn't much cop. However, in the six subsequent years, my output was stifled by the subconscious burden I hung over myself that everything I wrote must be for everyone else to read. To recapture that ethos, I had to find something that only I would be interested in reading.

And that was this behemothic tale about rabbits (names often lifted straight from Beatrix Potter) waging war on a mankind currently locked in an annihilative war of their own. A "Watership Down" for the post-9/11 era, if you will. The original goal was to write 80,000 words - the length of a novel. The longest I had written before was 60,000 words; less than half the length of this - it is 144,355 words in total. I'm largely satisfied with the end result, though I think the lessons learnt along the way were the greatest reward. There are certain advantages to be had from finishing a story of such scale and looking at the end result from the opposite direction (as an author named David Flusfeder once told me).

If I was to rewrite it (I don't plan to), I'd have to rewrite every word. I change my narrative style quite distinctly about halfway through - for the better, I hope. This happened because for the first 60,000 odd words I only had a vague idea where I was going. If I was to rewrite them, those 60,000 words could easily be cut down to 25,000. The first ten chapters or so get bogged down in the politics of an oligarchical rabbit warren, because I thought that was the story I wanted to write. In fact, though it took 40,000 words more to find its focus, the entire story is about a father searching for his daughter, and when he finds her, getting embroiled in the same great rebellion she has got herself caught up in. The beginning could be cut down to Peter Rabbit thinking he's lost his entire family, discovering his daughter Mopsy is still alive, and setting out in search of her. As it is, the main bad guy in this story, Boxer, doesn't even appear until 67,000 words in!

If anything, after this, 80,000 words seems just as insurmountable a task as it did before. But now it's because I overshot that by so much - having imagined it to be a struggle to reach 50,000 words with it, let alone three times that. What's to stop me boobing that one up again? Still, I suppose there are certain benefits to having too much on the page and to be able to prune it back... rather than have a blank page and sweat to fill it. The days of writer's block are behind me now.