I stopped my blog to write a novel... in just eight days

Anyone who follows this blog might have been surprised to see that nothing appeared on it for 13 days between June 11 and today. They would have been surprised because when I set up the blog I vowed I'd try to write something on here almost every day.

The reason for the gap – or at least part of it – was because I was writing a novel.

A novel – so how is that going? I hear some of you cry, with a certain note of derision in your voices.

'The novel's about a football agent who used to work on the sportsdesk of a national newspaper and the shenanigans of some of his players. There's lots of sex in it – so I probably won't be asking either my mum or my kids to proofread it.'

Well it's going very well, thank you. In fact I've finished it. That's right I've written a 50,000-word novel in less than two weeks. For anyone who's counting it actually took me just eight days! That's right eight days to write 50,000 words – that's more than 6,000 words a day.

To put it in perspective, my university dissertation, which was 5,000 words, took me a whole term. That's three months.

I've always wanted to write a novel and as I have a little time to myself at the moment, I thought well why not give it a try. I imagined it would take me several months, if not a couple of years to complete, but once I'd come up with an idea and started writing, I just kept going and going and going...

Of course that's not the end of the story (sorry, no pun intended). I'm aware that having completed the first draft I now need to work on a second draft. Well let's not be overly pessimistic here – I need to read it through again and make some corrections and amendments here and there. I guess in the publishing world this counts as the second draft. But heck why can't I sit back for a while and revel in the realisation that I have written a novel … and not only have I managed it, it's taken me just one day over a week.

My problem now, though, is that I don't want to start reading it. I know if I wrote it that fast it's bound to be riddled with mistakes and I'm worried I'll get dispirited and abandon the whole project before it's in a position where I can consider submitting it to a publisher.

So what's this eight-day wonder of a novel about then? I hear you cry. Hmm... well it's hardly War and Peace. I'd have to concede that it's aimed at the trashy end of the market too. My feeling when I set out was that if I was going to write a novel, then it should be one that would sell rather than one that would look good on the mantelpiece.

Essentially it's about a football agent who used to work on the sportsdesk of a national newspaper and the shenanigans of some of his players. There's lots of sex in it – so I probably won't be asking either my mum or my kids to proofread it.

The thing is though, when I got into it I found it astonishingly easy to write. Somehow the characters and the plot just seemed to slot into place. Whether this is a good thing or not, I have no idea. I've never written a work of fiction before so I've no idea if this is how it's meant to work.

I can remember at school we studied Madame Bovary by the great French romantic writer Gustav Flaubert for French A-level. I also remember that in one of those study aids you could buy about certain works of literature the great writer had apparently once said that when he wrote his masterpiece, he could hear certain sentences and paragraphs forming themselves in his brain several chapters before he wrote them. I had the exact same experience! Does that make me another Flaubert? Sadly, I suspect not.

After I finished the novel, I contacted my ex-wife on Facebook to see if her new husband, who has written books and is an English literature lecturer at university, had any tips. She said that his rule of thumb was to err on the side of leaving stuff out rather than putting it in. Wow! Thanks for that insight – I was at least hoping for the name and address of his publisher or an offer to read the final draft.

According to my ex he has the same agent as Hilary Mantel. I knew she wouldn't resist the chance to brag, but I had rather hoped they'd come up with the name of the agent.

So anyway as I contemplate pitching into writing a new draft, there is another thing I need to consider - what should the book be called? It's working title has been 'Playing Away' with 'Playing for the Other Side' as an alternative. I've also thought of 'The Sex Life of a Football Agent' or 'The Sex Life of a Soccer Agent'. I desperately want this book to sell and solve all of my money worries and I'd also live it if some bright spark from ITV or the BBC wanted to make a drama based on it.

This is all dreams of course... but, heck, no one will ever be able to take away from me the fact that I've written a novel. And in just eight days. I can die a happy man ...