Yes, but this time I want to join in

Usually I look the other way when memes come along but I utterly can't resist this one (seen at Light Reading and Of Books and Bicycles and Work in Progress) even though no one has tagged me.  Sniff!  (Admittedly on the entirely reasonable assumption that I wouldn't do it anyway...)

Ten signs that a book has been written by me.  (As I haven't actually written a book then consider these answers as more or less plausible fantasy*):

1. It is unfinished; handwritten in pencil in microscopic script on multiple un-numbered loose leaf sheets of narrow feint A4, consisting of interesting (to me) fragments which bear only a slight connection or resemblance to each other. 
2. It is set in Eighteenth century London and yet heavily influenced by Dickens.
3. Peter Ackroyd would be mentioned in the acknowledgements.
4. It would be the only children's book submitted to an agent without the customary accolade that "I've read this to my kids and they love it so you're bound to want to publish it"**.
5. It contains more adjectives than verbs.
6. It contains more shadow than sunshine.
7. It has rather more plot twists than originally planned as a result of accidental index card shuffling.
8. The names of the characters change from chapter to chapter; again, more authorial indecision than post-modern frolic.
9. It is a daring blend of nit-picking historical accuracy (picture its author spending a week researching what the Georgians ate for breakfast, only to discover that it was probably something as banal as toast, and then eventually summing up the week's work with "after breakfast they went out") and outrageous inaccuracy and anachronism (when the author doesn't have a week to spare and decides to write a description of a shipwreck in half an hour without knowing where the ship is, what sort of ship it is, what the bits of the ship are called, what would have happened to the passengers or any other sort of actual helpful detail, but does manage to sweep a cursed box out to sea along with its fanatically obsessed owner. Who doesn't yet have a name.)
10. In attempting to emulate all the authors I loved as a child (Leon Garfield, Joan Aiken, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Susan Cooper, E. Nesbitt, Henry Treece and er, Enid Blyton) it manages to fall between several stools whilst positively sawing the legs off the rest and rendering them generally unfit for use.  It also has a nice line in (usually unintentionally) comic mixed metaphors. Which occasionally become similes.

*  Looking at the list though, I have to confess that all except no. 3 are factually accurate when applied to my heaps of paper of wishful thinking about a novel.

** Based on a random reading of one chapter to the Misses Book World last year.

Comments

[Stefanie]

Heh, this was fun to read. I'm sure your book would turn out great :)

[LK]

Ooh, I like the London setting and Dickensian nod.

[Danielle]

Until I got to your asterisks, I was thinking to myself, are you *sure* you haven't started writing this? I like #9, and if it is plausible fantasy, who cares about nit-picking accuracy. I'm always happy to give a little free rein to an author who's telling me a good story.

[Jen]

If your book is as entertaining as your list you should definitely finish it X

[K]

I really appreciated this post! Charming, funny, and resonant (especially #9, which I relate to with both a smile and dismay!). ;]