Baggy monsters

The book is a huge and baggy monster. It is 110,000 words. That isn't really much too long. The usually length for a novel is 80,00 - 100,000 words. So length isn't really the problem. It's lack of shape and structure which is worrying. I write very tightly crafted and careful books. My last novel was re-written fourteen times. This one will probably be the same. But maybe my idea of what a novel should be is changing. When I wrote my first novel it was described by the publishers Little Brown as being 'quietly intelligent.' I was just thrilled by that desciption of it (not that they published it, mind you). I wanted my books to be quietly intelligent. But now I'm beginning to wonder. I find myself a little bored of all these tight lipped and sparse English novels that I read. What's wrong with being garrulous and extravagant? At the moment I'm in love with the language of Dylan Thomas - extreme, gushing, lyrical, passionate, only half intelligible, not at all English. Why not write like that? Perhaps I will do. But I suspect that the awful truth is that even those big, rangy, extreme, wind-bag type novels are actually very carefully put together. They look like baggy monsters but underneath that baggy exterior there's a frame-work which has been tightly bolted and braced into place. But still I'm glad to have admitted to being bored with being understated. Bring on the ranting, the anger, the overly insistent voice, the wasteful use of words.