Weren't you writing a novel?

You're probably wondering what's happened to the book.

Or maybe you're not, because frankly you have better things to do, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend that you are.

Well, the answer is, not a heck of a lot.  I'm not a big fan of taking too much responsibility for my failures, so I blame it on the move (do you have any idea how much crap I have to try to squeeze into boxes?!)

The plan was to read the book from start to finish and jot down a few notes on how to make it better.  I've gotten through a bit more than half so far, and most of my notes read like this:
- "No!"
- "Delete"
- "Gag"
- "What was I thinking?"

It's heaps of fun and great for my self-esteem - a bit like stabbing myself repeatedly with a spork.

My biggest problem is that my voice/style/tone - whatever you want to call it - changed about one third into the book.  Clearly, when I started out, I was very intimidated by the prospect of writing a novel (a Novel!) and decided this was Serious Stuff and there could be no dicking around like there is on the blog.

As a result, the beginning of the book is Awful. 

Fortunately, I appear to have gotten over myself about six chapters in and the rest is terrible for other, possibly more manageable reasons.  But what do I do with the beginning?  Throw it out and start again?  Work with what I have?

Since I don't have an answer to that question, I'm filling up cardboard boxes with junk instead.