Back to Work then
Now that I’ve come down off the high of the launch week and the first review, I’m back to working on the next one, (called After the Twelfth) and I’m finding it hard. I had hoped to get it more or less finished just after Christmas but it’s not looking hopeful, and the blog is a great distraction.
I guess I’d just forgotten that it took over 17 drafts to get Another Time and Place finished, or maybe I just thought that the second one ought to be easier. It isn’t. And the pressure is greater - I’ve proved I can write, but do I have more than one novel in me?
Only time will tell.
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November 30th, 2006 at 5:41 am
I hate writing endings. I always feel like I’m pedalling uphill backwards with them - for some reason they seem to take longer. I’ve got the same problem at the minute with finishing my second book, so many sympathies there.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
It’s not the ending as such - I always whizz through the first draft, which is my favourite bit of writing: for me it’s the rewriting that takes the time, the editing - shuffling things into the best order, developing certain character traits (some characters just seem to develop themselves, others take a lot more thought and work), finding all the inconsistencies and repetitions, rewording whole sections until the flow and rhythm and sense of the words are just how I want them. An impossible task really - I read a quote somewhere (it may have been by G.K. Chesterton) that an author never really finishes a book, he just gives up on it.
But I’ve got a way to go before I get to that stage. Anyway, good luck with yours and thanks for the sympathy:-)
December 1st, 2006 at 3:12 am
I can imagine that editing this one I’m working on is going to blow several fuses. As you say, things develop during the course of writing the first draft that mean you need to go back into the very beginning of the story and start setting things up for what comes later. Agh!
That said, I had a good writing day today. I think it’s because I was in a particularly good mood - I just signed my contract!
F