There was editing a book I had written. Over there is what happens when a whole load of editors have read it and responded. At the moment, I'm sandwiched in the middle, I neither have a book to edit for an agent nor do I have...well, a book to edit for a publisher. I shall go to the supermarket and do the shopping.
It's been an emotional day. My agent very kindly sent me a copy of her pitch, which was wonderfully written, warm, funny, clever and full of hooks. I can see what she did, but I'm completely sure I couldn't have done it. It's a difficult book to place in a genre, and I know that's a problem, so she's called it 'fresh and original', while planting it with crime and historical with a touch of fantasy. She didn't even mention the main characters, which is genius, because they are the characters whose stories are most complex, most tangled. Instead, she has gone straight to the historical characters and my Professor.
The agent has obviously been talking the book up for ages, since the Mslexia competition really, and has whetted a lot of appetites. I don't think I have ever realised or appreciated what agents do before. In the past, I wondered if an agent would just be one more person to worry about, but now I realise she is the buffer between me, and the mean machine that is publishing. If you're writing novels, I wish you every success in getting yourself your own lovely agent, because she has just made it look so easy.
And if the book doesn't sell? I realised today, I've got as close to being published as you can without actually getting a contract, with a book that was easy to write, in fact a pleasure to write. I'm sure I could do a bit better, especially with the advice of an agent to help me. It's all going in the right direction. I have been inspired and encouraged by reading blogs like Jeff Abbott's, Catherine Robertson and Liz Fenwick to name just a few. I hope that my 'journey to publication', the one I started three years ago, will encourage my visitors to do the same (hell, go for it, outdo me!) I'm off to avoid the chocolate aisle and linger in the healthy eating vegetables, before sneaking off for a fat slice of CAKE.
Polished, corrected, tidied, the manuscript is off on its journey to editors. My lovely agent, and she is kind, she phoned me just to reassure me today, is writing the pitch, phoning around to get the book to the right people, and tidying up my biography. She also wanted the synopsis of my next book, just to prove I'm not a one book wonder, I suppose. It's going off to many people, people she's been talking it up to for months. Most will 'thanks, but no thanks', it's not an easy book to place, with elements of a historical novel and a fantasy edge too. Hopefully one (or better, two) will like it.
My job is now to forget about it and let her show it around. It may all come to nothing, but it's out of my hands, which is a huge relief. On days like this, I remember all the negative messages you hear about how impossible it is to get published. While I'm actually working on it, it seems more likely. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, the poetry collection is having its final polishes too. There comes a point when you have to say, for novels as well as poetry, it ain't perfect but I'm out of time/patience. I'm tired, sad and unwell, so it feels a bit uphill at the moment. But in a few weeks, I'm off for the rarest of treats, a whole week on holiday with my husband. No kids, just the two of us, in the Lake District.
All the frustrations of the last weeks, from UCAS cock-ups with no.1 son (now resolved), having to declare an elderly relative no longer able to cope with her finances, and the sheer tiredness that comes with being ill, will be left behind, and we can get a bit of the perspective that comes from looking back at your life from a long way away.
I don't think I'm alone in my insecurities. I don't think I have ever finished a manuscript, really polished, checked, read-out-loud, read again, finished a book. Because if I did, then someone can come along and judge it, and I can't tell myself, 'well, of course they think that, it isn't finished.' Then I can keep the hope alive, that I am really an undiscovered writing talent and publishers will want to buy my book.
There's another fear. Not only am I afraid that I am not the above talent, but I also have a fear that I might be. In which case, the opportunity to mismanage my writing is enormous. And how do people cope with public success? Getting published isn't something you can do quietly, in private, like a painter who just shows a picture to their nicest friends. The book is going to be sent away to the harshest of judges - people who need to make money out of something born of imagination and whimsy. Even if they like it, they have to show it's a commercial proposition. If it passes that (HUGE) hurdle, then it is tested against the world of booksellers and book sales. The opportunities for failure are just so enormous. The odd chance of success is just as scary, not everyone will like the blasted thing. Even the most successful of books has its detractors (in fact, I suspect they have many more).
I'm rambling. I am becoming a book bore, because I am trying to hold two equally impossible ideas in the same head. This book is either going to be a monumental failure, or an actual success. I should just go back in the other room and complete the polishing, send it off to my lovely agent, change my phone number and hide under a duvet until about 2015. That sounds like a plan...
For the first time ever, I have dared to take the time to add the final gloss to a manuscript. I took the decision to ask the agent to hold fire for a day or two, while I sit down and consciously read the whole book (The Secrets of Life and Death) out loud, with a red pen in my hand. The book looks very different in paperback, and I am coming at it as a critical reader rather than as a panicky writer.
There aren't any major mistakes. Most of what I am doing is improving the writing, adding a layer of polish, while picking up the odd error. It's a lot more reassuring than I expected it to be, as mostly (for the first time), it feels consistent, sharp, edgy, well paced. I don't write very positively about my writing, and even less so about this particular book, but now I'm pleased with it. I don't want an editor to pick it up, see three or four less than smart phrases, or dialogue that doesn't flow, and start to build up an image of a book that isn't all that well written. I know the story works for some readers, but with the help of readers and editors I haven't just chased down mistakes but gained confidence in critiquing my own writing.
So, thank you to those people who have been enormously supportive and helpful, and I hope the final version (which will be finished early next week, just in time for the agent to come back) reflects all the time and energy that has gone into it. I feel like this is my 'training book', writing A Baby's Bones is so much easier and the first draft was so much better. Even if it doesn't get published, it has made me more able to do every stage of writing a novel.
Giving myself permission to start draft 2 of A Baby's Bones has had a freeing effect. I can look at what I have, and take the main character in an entirely new direction. What the book needs (I think) is to be darker, more tense and the characters more conflicted. The male character is being wasted, he can be much more focused and bloody minded, which would help the story.
I started with the idea that the story in the past can slowly parallel the story in the present. In the past, the man has a 'stalker', a woman who believes that he loves her although he doesn't spend any time with her or ever speak to her (erotomania). I liked the idea of mirroring the past with the present but getting away from that slightly predictable idea, gives me room to really explore two better rounded human beings. I also need contrast between the male characters, and starting a new draft allows redrawing them.
Best of all, redrafting has given me valuable thinking time. I tend to be a slave to the writing process and don't give enough thought to where the story is going (or going to end up) and grind to a halt because I took a wrong turn chapters ago. Now I can chill out, start again. I have some very good words I can just move around and rework, so I will quickly build a good platform from which to launch the new chapters. I hope!
I think I have just about come to terms with the fact that I am not a plotter, after all. No matter how many different methods I try, the second I have a coherent plan, I think of something way cooler and write that instead. I have been analysing what I do do, and as I save major drafts (I email them to myself in case the computer blows up or the house is knocked down) and there's a common thread squeaking through the mishmash.
- Crime novel: I got to 40k and keeled over, started again with the same characters (which I knew much better), got to 60k, ran out of steam, started a third draft, which finished at 87k.
- Novel about B&B (I know, pedestrian for me): first draft, 38k, second draft 61k, final book 77k
- Borrowed Time: 40k, 60k, then up to present 98k.
Each time, I realised the characters had developed, perhaps plotlines that were in the first draft could be replaced or improved upon in subsequent drafts. Maybe a whole new strand needs to be woven into the narrative, or an additional character, or maybe characters need to be pruned out to make the main character more important. What I seem to do is analyse what I have and then build on those foundations - not so much plotting as writing the story again, only better. The problem is, coming to that fateful point when I'm running out of energy at 40k feels like I've run dry of ideas, and I know I'm not. I'm trying to spend more time thinking, so I can start draft 2 with new energy. For a start, I know that the 'romance' in A Baby's Bones needs to be dragged back to a few speculative glances and misunderstandings until the end of the book. Instead, the tension in the story can develop through the book without light relief. (Next draft, I may change this again, but it's a process).
I hugely admire people who write a passage, review, edit and perfect it the next day, then calmly carry on with the next passage in a linear fashion. But I'm definitely not one of them.
After the airy fairy work of trying to get published, and with a period of waiting forecast, which may or may not be productive, it's time to get back to earth. The rain is falling, which means the weeds are springing out of the ground far faster than the beleaguered vegetables, and we have new hens. Nature and the cycle of life...well, chicken keeping anyway. There's something very grounding about pulling up tiny chickweed plants, tossing them to greedy hens, scraping up chicken poo for the compost, turning and watering and nurturing said compost then spreading it over raised beds...to grow more lettuces/beans/tomatoes. The other day all I had to harvest was a big handful of fresh sorrel leaves and a crumble's worth of rhubarb, but it's incredibly satisfying to pick. This morning one of the juvenile chickens produced a perfect, miniature egg in warm cream - probably the Light Sussex hen. Like this one.
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There's just something lovely about growing your own food, even if it's just a few herbs and a bit of salad. The raspberries are growing like mad, too, and that's something we can't afford as a family unless we grow them.
One of the hens is a brown leghorn, a very pretty little hen but the bigger birds aren't making life easy for her, she's getting chased away from all the treats. She will grow up to look like this one:
I'm inclined to write chickens into the next chapter of the current WIP. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying a few days off, the kids are home, the husband's off work, the book is out of reach, and I've got time to make bread and possibly some pots of jam from all that rhubarb. My rhubarb and lemon jam, though I say it myself, is very good on toast, and I think we still have a big bag of berries from last year's crop in the freezer somewhere for blackberry and raspberry jelly...it might make the unseasonably wet weather more bearable! Meanwhile, on an animal theme, if I sit at the computer too long, the cat politely pats my leg, then sits heavily on my arm, and finally does THIS:
Time between pat and THIS was about forty seconds, Harry Wooggo gets less patient with age. If that fails she knocks the jar of cat biscuits into the bin and my tea onto the keyboard. I usually have to give in.
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