Should I or shouldn't I?

When I write (anything really, short stories, novels, poems, press releases, whatever) I tend not to use contractions. You know: shouldn't, won't, I'll etc. But I have a problem. I have an idea going round my head that simply has to be written in first person and that person would never speak in full words. It's just not in his nature! I can hear his voice in my head, telling me the story, or at least setting up the situation so he CAN tell me the story, and he is obviously the kind who uses contractions.

My question is: would that put you off reading something of novel length?

Alchemy - inventing the big brother I never had

My WIP is a bit of a monster at the moment and I'm fighting to get it to fall into place properly. It's my own fault. I've been writing chapters as the muse has presented them - not in the order they will finally take in the book. I'm realising that I have described a lot of surroundings that are season-dependent and might be faced with cutting the heads off a few chapters and stitching them to earlier or later events. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, this book will have a cast of thousands (well - lots anyway) and I'm enjoying inventing them - including the big brother I never had in real life but always wanted.

He wanted to be a scientist and I can remember him clearly in his white laboratory coat. One of his favourite possessions was a chemistry set and he would carry out smelly experiments in the kitchen at weekends with lots of liquids that frothed and popped and changed colour when he mixed them. Sometimes he would let me watch, but I could never join in because he insisted that safety was important and I did not have a proper coat like his.  His real love was mechanics though, and he would take things apart to see how they worked, then sit for hours putting everything back together just to prove that he could. He wanted to show everyone, including himself, that he understood what was going on behind the front of things. He was a bit like that with people too, because he could always see straight through me. There was no fooling him about anything and he often unravelled my teenage troubles for me, with his calm and wise view of the world.

Now all I have to do is finish writing it...

I had a parcel in the post yesterday. This is what was in it:

Some time ago I won a competition hosted over at the wonderful Year of Writing Dangerously by the equally wonderful Michael G-G. This was my prize!
I would just like to say

THANK YOU

for choosing me as the winner.
(A quick scan has already informed me that my current WIP is around 25,000 words short.  That's almost half as many again then.............. Back to the keyboard AJ!)

Thanks again Michael. I promise to make good use of it.