the new novel

Well it is 2008 and I have started it as I mean to go on, new book, 6,000 words a month I feel is a reasonable target, and so far I am sticking to it.
This is my second novel, and some things are easier second time round, some more difficult. For instance I am already thinking about viewpoint, which did not happen until I was well into the previous one. I am toying with the idea of doing it first person, not sure. I wonder how late into a book one can make that decision? I am also thinking about structure far more and am fairly excited by what I am intending to do.
What is harder is looking at the mountain to climb. The first novel just starts, and being naive, one thinks, oh this will be easy, just keep writing. But having got through that, I now know what lies ahead and it looks terrifying from here.
I do remember last time that the first chapter was easy and I felt would hook the reader from the start; this time round it feels like pants. But I can come back to that.
Here is an interesting thought though; it is assumed that the first chapter, the first line, is what will hook the reader. Everyone can quote, "It's a universally acknowledged fact..." (P&P - Austen) and many others to illustrate this point. (Does anyone remember the Monty Python sketch where watching Thomas Hardy write a novel was treated as spectator sport with commentator etc? - 10 minutes sitting watching him write the opening line, score it out, start again etc, and then commentators discussing whether it was a good opening?)
My thought is though, when I pick up a book and consider whether to read it, I don't ever read the first line. I look at the cover and title with - if I am attracted I pick it up and read the back. I then flick through the pages and get a sense of it. Decision is never made by reading the first page.
I recently got "Life on the Refridgerator Door" by Alice Kuipers by this method. I quite liked its bright pink cover, but skimming through it, I could see that it was entirely made up of post its written by mother and daughter, and was intrigued by this structure.
Someone from my creative writing class gave me a snippet from the Daily Express Nov 4th, Beachcomer. He (or she - I don't usually read the Express) says reading the first line of the second chapter is far more revealing and interesting, but that most writers don't bother crafting this as well. Interesting becuase I think I do write each chapter as if it were a stand alone feature and I need to keep the reader going. Whether this has worked, I guess I will find out soon as right now the book is being read by an agent....
Keep in touch - it is great to hear from all the other writers out there who are taking time to read and respond to me!

Books and more books....

I was in Borders last week and managed to resist buying any books. That is probably a first for me, but I am trying to be mindful of the two shelves of books waiting to be read (that is forgetting of course all the books which have now been shelved elsewhere in the house, unread). However I was cheered up by a comment from AA Gill in Sunday times that everywhere else in the world, literate people have a list of books they have read, only the English (I am sure he meant British) have a list of books they haven't read. I resolve not to beat myself up for never having read anything Russian apart from Solzhenitsyn, not having read Proust, or Chaucer, or all the other worthies that I probably should have read and probably also never will.
However I am constantly surprised by the fact that worthy books are often better than we think they will be. A bookclub I used to belong to insisted on reading Dickens; the book selected was Bleak House (this was before the marvellous TV adaptation). I found myself 400 words in and still struggling to get interested, but then I could not put it down and the last 500 words fairly raced by. Fantastic.
I think it is a mistake to rely on TV adaptations to tell you about a book. I have seen at least three versions of Oliver Twist, but only the extended version at Christmas really gripped me, with all the extra characters and layers, and now I am determined to read the original.
Dickens breaks all the rules for writing. He relies on coincidence once too often, his nice characters are impossibly nice, especially given their backgrounds, but to be kind, he was writing pre Freud and perhaps did not know that a neglected and abused child is unlikely to grow up into an unselfish, brave and self sufficient citizen, but is highly likely to be a psychopath. His names are weird and wonderful, utterly unbelieveable, but entirely loveable. His characters are often larger than life, almost caricatures, and I wonder whether we could not learn from this as writers? Perhaps the best, most memorable characters are those who almost could not be real?