Tag Archives: redrafting

Begin again

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I had grand plans for this January. Having spent a couple of months pondering and planning, I was all set to begin writing my third novel. There’s something about starting something new that sits very comfortably with me this time of year. The no-pressure creativity of a first draft, where you’re free to let the story and the characters take you where they want, secure in the knowledge that there’ll be plenty of time for redrafts later.

But then just before Christmas I opened an email from my agent that scuppered all that.

It wasn’t a bad email, and I knew it was coming. I’d sent her the second draft of my second novel a few weeks before. Though I’d prodded and tweaked and added and deleted, I knew it wasn’t perfect. But I suppose somewhere in the recesses of my mind I hoped that maybe I’d managed a miracle, that I’d solved all the niggling problems of the first draft in one fell swoop and we’d be ready to begin the terrifying but exciting process of sending it out to publishers.

Part of me’s glad that she agrees it needs more work. But it’s taken a huge mental shift to put down the tantalising threads of the new story that was beginning to develop and return to this one, hoping that somehow with fresh eyes the answers about how to release its potential will leap out at me.

I didn’t touch it at all over Christmas. And then there was Arthur’s birthday. And New Year.

But yesterday I sat down and read Becky’s email again. There were plenty of positives to buoy my spirit, and plenty of questions to challenge me too.

I’ve decided I need to see my words on paper. I haven’t done that with the second draft yet, and it really does make a difference. So I’ve printed the manuscript off and am ready to begin again.

I’m starting small this time, with the new mechanical pencil that Santa bought me replacing the multicoloured pens and post-it notes I used to attack the first draft. I feel like what I’m looking for is more subtle this time. Not that I’m ruling out major changes – I have some ideas about structure and characterisation that might make things very different.

We shall see.

But for now it’s simply time to embrace the new challenges January has thrown up, to hold onto my conviction that this is a story worth telling, and to search deep inside myself for the very best way to tell it.

It is time to begin again.

 

 

Muddled Manuscript

And relax

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This time last week I was giving myself a serious talking to. The end of the second draft was tantalisingly close, but I just couldn’t see how I was going to get it done.

There’s something funny that happens when I’m close to finishing something big. I find it hard to get a handle on exactly what I’ve done and what needs doing, and in this shimmering, shifting version of reality I oscillate wildly between feeling like I have in my hands a work of genius and being sure that I’ve actually just spent the last year of my life working on a pile of absolute tosh.

Actually this week I’ve realised that just means I’m approaching the point when I need to hand it over to someone else. There’s only so long you can spend moving words around in a four hundred page document before you start to doubt your judgement, and begin to be in danger of causing more harm than good.

So yesterday afternoon, having sat on my finished manuscript for the weekend and then made a final sweep through to tweak things that may or may not have needed tweaking, I finally sent it out into the world.

Well, when I say into the world, I mean to my agent. And when I say finished, I mean finished for now. I’m under no illusion that there will be more redrafting to come, but I’m pretty pleased with the shape of things at the moment.

I hope the changes I’ve made are an improvement. But even if things end up reverting to the way they were or changing again in a different direction the whole process has been extremely valuable.

And for now I need to not think too much about it. That feels weird, in a way, having made the novel my priority for the past two months. There are of course plenty of other projects waiting in the wings, so whilst on one level I can breathe a sigh of relief relaxing is not really an option.

I have a million blog posts in my head, and I need to work out what to do with those. We’re also entering the preparing-for-Christmas-and-Arthur’s-birthday phase, which last year completely took over for a few weeks at least. Then there are all the books I want to read. And of course there’s the next novel, the seeds of which are desperate for a little nourishment. I’m super keen to start formulating the ideas for that too – I’ll be leaving a bit of my brain free for further revisions as and when I get my next wave of feedback, but the rest of it needs to be kept busy lest the doubt sets in.

So not really too much relaxing, but a job done – and done well, I think. We shall see.

 

Writing Bubble

Another voice

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As I’ve been working through my draft, chopping and changing and adding and tweaking, there’s something I haven’t quite been able to reconcile.

On one level, this novel is a thriller. Something bad is happening – right from the beginning. Except my protagonist doesn’t know about it, and we’re seeing things from her point of view. I need to create a growing sense of dread, a sense that all is not right in the world – but from Grace’s perspective, for the majority of the time at least, everything is unfolding as it should. There are moments where her intuition tells her to be careful, but it’s hard to really work these without things seeming ham-fisted. And besides, she’s not stupid: if she was really uneasy then she wouldn’t take the steps she needs to for everything to pan out as it does.

When I was in the planning stages I thought perhaps I could tell the story through multiple voices, weave the different versions of reality through. I soon concluded that this wouldn’t work, that it would give too much away where I wanted to leave the reader guessing.

Except now I’m not so sure…

I wrote a character exercise last week to explore things as my antagonist sees them, and it turns out his voice is so strong that I don’t think I can silence it. He can’t have equal airtime in the novel – it is not really him that this story is about – but I think there can be flashes, moments of insight into the dark mind at work behind the scenes that will colour the reader’s interpretation of the rest.

That’s where I’m at right now anyway. I’m going to see what happens if I let him have his say at a few key points, whether I can manage to craft his interludes so they create that sense of dread without giving too much away. If I can pull it off it should add an element of dramatic irony as things unfold, give the reader a smidgen more knowledge than Grace has herself to filter their reactions to her through.

And if nothing else then just the process will give me more of an insight into what’s driving him, and that can be no bad thing.

 

Muddled Manuscript

The edit begins…

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At the moment my desk looks something like this. Having let the first draft of my second novel sit and mature over a long and glorious summer, it is time to get down to the serious business of editing.

I’m trying to be quite methodical about it so far. My first step was to read the manuscript in its printed form – an altogether different experience from reading it on the screen – annotating it with things that struck me: questions, problems, things I might need to change.

I’ve quite enjoyed getting back into the story, but to be honest I’m finding it pretty tricky to keep an objective eye on it. Fortunately I’m not doing this alone: I’ve had several people read the first draft and give me feedback, including my agent who handily vocalised some of the things that were niggling me about the characters in particular.

That’s where the post-it notes come in. There are a few amendments to specific scenes I’m working on, but mostly they’re threads that run through the whole book, things that need to be tweaked to achieve the effect I’m aiming for and keep the reader on side. So as I read through the draft again, a different coloured pen in hand this time, my eyes are flicking to those orange stars as my mind shifts and changes and adds the details that I think will make a difference.

I’m about a third of the way through this second critical reading now, and am quietly satisfied by the things that are starting to fall into place. I’m hoping that by the middle of next week I should be able to get back into Scrivener and start the actual rewrite – and that as I switch from paper to screen again more ideas will seep in to give my story the depth and authenticity it needs.

It’s an exciting process, and definitely a challenging one. I think the biggest challenge is not being able to completely immerse myself in it – having to keep a toddler entertained and trying to keep this blog going too. So the edit is happening in very distinct chunks, and invariably I have to tear myself away just as things are getting interesting.

But I’m working on it every day, and hopefully my brain will keep ticking over during the enforced breaks, searching out new inspiration and solving the problems that remain outside my grasp whilst I’m staring at the page. I’m not very good at being patient – once I set my mind to something I generally just like to get it done. But in this case I think the slower pace might just work to my advantage… We shall see.

 

Writing Bubble

 

When Only Paper Will Do

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I almost forgot to mention that I’ve been musing on the novel writing process over at The Reading Residence today as part of Jocelyn’s #bringbackpaper campaign. However much I love my computer, there are times when only paper will do… Pop over and find out more – there’s lots of papery goodness to ogle at in the Papery Peep linky too!

 

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