\n
It\u2019s done! A 77,300-word first draft of the seventeenth century witch trial novel-in-progress is now backed up, awaiting printing and the start of the development edit. <\/p>\n
What a blooming marathon. Five years almost to the day from starting the research seriously until I typed ‘The End’, even though I’m calling it ‘An End’ out of superstition.<\/p>\n
Everyone says the second book is tough. Boy, they aren’t kidding. <\/p>\n
The biggest creative eye-opener of finishing the full draft was an entirely unexpected release of pent-up creative thoughts which arrived in a rush AFTER I spent a week tweaking the resolution. Years of fiddling with single sentence commercial pitches fell away, replaced by a solid plot one-liner (15 words).<\/p>\n
More importantly, a character one-liner arrived out of the blue, too, which, with hindsight, I can see is the heart of the story, the universal wood hidden within the story trees. The specific character journey on which I had been fixated turned out to be a metaphor for something simpler. Wow. Good to know. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to stick my neck out here and say that feeling confident about the ending at this stage represents progress since (from memory) I didn’t figure out the grand finale of The Goose Road<\/i> until the end of the first of two rounds of development edits. <\/p>\n
Back then, I had the luxury of working with a wonderful cohort of fellow writers on the Bath Spa MA, plus the insight of the inestimable Marie-Louise Jensen, my MA manuscript tutor. The Goose Road<\/i> then went through a second development edit, requested by Mara Bergman, my editor at Walker, before she bought the manuscript.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You could therefore say it’s too soon to congratulate myself on reaching An End for Book 2 when I\u2019ve no idea what the future holds for this story. Reworking the synopses has, however, been encouraging. <\/p>\n
Which ever way I look at them, An End is satisfying. The rest of the story needs at lot of work to get there, but it is a worthwhile place to arrive at. Thus, An End has resolved a deep-seated worry of mine for the past five years that there wasn’t a real story within the history I\u2019m re-writing. <\/p>\n
Basically, I\u2019ve been afraid each iteration of \u2018the story\u2019 was a bolt-on, something to carry the external plot, and the protagonist merely a vessel for that plot. The universality of the character one-liner therefore came as a shock as well as a huge relief. There is a story in there after all. <\/p>\n
The other main lesson I\u2019m taking from finishing Draft 1 is just how much perseverance it’s taken. The trade publishing environment has got even more precarious in the past eight years since The Goose Road<\/i> came out, with advances apparently even smaller than they were, or non-existent. Thus the juicy carrot of an (imagined) paid publishing contract which kept me going last time simply isn’t there. OK, this manuscript might get published, but there\u2019s a good chance it won\u2019t, and even if it is, we all know that\u2019s no guarantee of anything in terms of marketing or sales. <\/p>\n
On the upside, self-publishing has all but shed its second-hand status in the intervening years, so that option is now a matter of personality and whether one can handle all the marketing involved. Having perservered thus far, I guess I will just press on and worry about all that later.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a delightful and very welcome surprise since I locked the manuscript away for the requisite four-to-six weeks is news that Sara Grant is publishing an editing guide with Writers & Artists, The Ultimate Guide to Editing your Novel<\/i>, coming out in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My copy was instantly on pre-order. The advice from her and her fellow tutor\/mentors at Book Bound and Scooby were the foundations for developing The Goose Road<\/i> into its publishable form. I’ve every confidence that Sara’s new guide will become a bible for loads of us, me included.<\/p>\n
What else to say in this pause between drafting and editing?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Draft 1 owes its existence to a bunch of writing gurus, which I’ve talked about here for years, including Story Grid, Save the Cat for Novels, James Scott Bell’s oeuvre, John Yorke’s Into the Wood, Robert Mckee’ Story, John Truby, and Will Storr to name but a few. Jeff Lyon’s patterns of decline and elevation are also a good way of thinking about character development, imho.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’m also reviewing my own OCEAN-based personality profiling system – that’s the Big Five personality traits openness, conscientiousness, extraversion\/introversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism – which I developed for The Goose Road<\/i> and blogged about here yonks ago. I’ve changed computers since then so these ABBA posts turned out to be the best archive for all that work! <\/p>\n
This time, I’m linking OCEAN person-based traits to my protagonist’s social identity as a lawyer, imagining how his in-group’s group think about witchcraft influenced him, both in terms of his beliefs and his behaviour. I think this is going to be super instructive for the development edit, and I’ll blog about that in the future. <\/p>\n
So, there we go. Eighteen years of writing fiction on and off, and I can says with confidence that everyone sticking with their Book 2 is a hero. Solidarity to y’all. And a huge hat-tip to every author with a shelf full of titles. Awesome, guys. Just awesome. <\/p>\n
@HouseRowena on Musk\u2019s cess pit <\/p>\n
Rowena House Author for a live Facebook diary about the WIP\u00a0<\/p>\n
PS Apologies again for the lack of photos. I’ve got loads to upload, but whenever I try a big Google message shows up and just sits there, blethering about accessing cookies. Also, it’s Easter Sunday and my dog is telling me in no uncertain terms I’ve been on the computer long enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All the best! <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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