The Blackhope Enigma
In the in-between days, I keep trying to cull a lot of extraneous stuff in my studio, do a bit of planning for new projects and general other stuff. There are just not enough hours in the day to do everything I want to!
When last you heard from me, I was gunning to finish the draft of The Next Book. I had built up a head of steam, and was bearing down on the dénouement, when I was felled by my mortal enemies: sore throat, runny nose, sneezing and coughing. It was a whopper, by my lurgie standards, but I know from previous experience that I can keep on writing through these things.The Blackhope Enigma
At any rate, last week my lovely editor granted me a bit of extra time to finish the draft and I promptly collapsed, briefly, into a heap. However, there were exciting things afoot, namely the Cheltenham Literary Festival. I managed to pull my stuffed-up brain together and get on that train south last Friday.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect, this being my first big literary festival. Reader, I loved it. From everything I’d heard, Cheltenham is one of the best organised of them all, and I can verify that. Very friendly staff, great hospitality and a pleasant town to boot (plus good weather – not to be sneezed at). As an illustrator used to doing a lot of DIY events (setting up the space myself, cleaning up, etc.), I have to say that it was amazing to have the support of staff to do all that, plus Waterstone’s dealing with the book selling area, plus Templar’s super PR lady on hand, as well as my super agent.
My event went really well – great crowd, full house and lots of friendly faces in the book signing queue afterwards. Of course, it was too short to do lots of drawing (we were drawing monsters in mazes, as you do), but enough for a taster.
Later that day we were trundling north again, heads in a spin, tired but happy. And then, somehow, magically, The Next Book draft has finished itself over the last couple of days. (Okay, I had something to do with it, but honestly, it seems odd how it happened.)
I am sitting here in the studio. The printer has just coughed out the last few pages of it. I have my Red Pen at the ready. There will be a word cull before my editor even sees this draft. And there will be much more red ink to come over the next few months. When we are done with this baby, it will be as gleaming and shiny as possible.
And did I mention illustrations? Yes, I will be making those, too. The Artpen is warming up.
This blog has been sorely neglected. It’s growing weeds and spawning spiders, it’s been so long since I brushed it off.
Mea culpa. I have been deep into writing The Next Book, which I have mentioned before. But this time, unlike the first book, someone is waiting for it. The beauty (and the pitfall) of writing the first book as an Unpublished Writer is that you have all the time in the world.
I find myself in the nice position of having to write The Next Book to a deadline. And I am finding that I might even prefer that. Okay, an extra couple of weeks would be nice, but I have this feeling that I would just slow down, take my foot off the gas.
The discipline of a regular writing schedule is really useful. Once I stop overthinking the thing, and glue my posterior onto the chair, I just get on with it.
So somehow, over the past weeks, I have grown this manuscript, little by little, with regular work. Now, this isn’t to say I haven’t questioned the quality of it, because I have. But what I have realised, by reading other writers’ blogs and tweets, is that everyone worries, at some point, that everything s/he has written so far is rubbish.
Here’s a nice blog piece by Keris Stainton that pretty much sums this feeling up. I was tweet-alerted to it by the lovely Stephanie Burgis, a fellow Templar author.
So is there any answer to this dilemma of reaching the middle, or even the end of a manuscript and wanting to deep-six it? Yeah, ignore the urge. See the thing through, get it done and put some clear blue water between you and It.
All this being said, I have a manuscript to get back to. You may not hear from me for a little while yet, but I shall return to jog my victory lap around the arena soon.