Tag: nanowrimo

This is a story about editing…

I decided to re-read my first novel. It surprised me just how well it starts – I was prepared to cringe with embarrassment at something that had not stood the test of time well, but it was OK. Later in the book, I fumbled with a couple of things – perhaps I was hurriedly bashing out a chapter, without a clear plan of how the scene should unfold. Towards the end of the book, there was a glaring error that was due purely to a lack of research: I had been a little lazy. The ending tried very hard to be enigmatic, but I imagine that it would have been confusing for many readers, and a little underwhelming.

Wouldn’t it be arrogant to assume that I would be able to sit down one day and pen a good novel? Of course my first full-length story was going to be a learning exercise, and I was going to make mistakes. All I had was the first scene, the general plot outline and a twist – I had no idea how I was going to end the story. Writing dialogue is not something I’d done a lot of, so I had to develop that skill as I went along. I would spend quite a long time trying to remember what I had and hadn’t told the reader, so that I wouldn’t contradict myself or spoil the surprises I had planned. As a learning exercise, it was brilliant.

As November 1st approaches, I’m getting increasingly excited about starting my second novel. My first book explored an individual, and the other characters were purely set dressing in a story which was about loneliness and isolation. My second book will study relationships; societies – my mind buzzes with ideas, because there’s so much scope to play around with multiple actors in my new story.

The opening scene is very important, to set the tone for the rest of the story I’m telling. I keep adding little bits to the image I’m creating in my mind – it’s so much more than an image. I think about the textures, the mood, the sounds and importantly, the smells. I want to make the book as much an olfactory experience as is possible to do without having to impregnate the pages with scratch-n-sniff chemicals.

It seems amateurish to break the fourth wall, and to be ‘so meta’ as to talk directly to you, the reader, about the process of writing a work of fiction. To have hijacked my blog to talk about my next book project, is an indication of just how overexcited I am about writing another novel, such that I can’t quite contain myself. I’m terribly afraid that I’ll be suddenly overwhelmed by the challenge when I start on Wednesday – the blank page in front of me will intimidate me, and I will be afraid to make the first mark.

As I did last year, I plan on publishing my first draft live, as I go along. I’m thinking that I might publish on medium.com this year, so that I’m sharing a popular writing platform with other authors who are partaking in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo 2017).

Many publishers will tell you to shove your manuscript up your arse, if you are foolish enough to tell them that you wrote it during NaNoWriMo. There’s quite a glut of crappy unedited manuscripts that gather in the inboxes of literary agents, during December. Like people who join a gym straight after the Christmas holiday season, as a New Year’s resolution, those fat unfit faces soon disappear as the year wears on. I know that if have serious intentions of becoming a bestselling author, I will need to become a better editor.

Like I did last year, I’m inviting edits, improvements and suggestions, as the new novel emerges from the depths of my imagination. It was immensely pleasurable, to have my friends trying to guess what was going to happen next, and to be then able to gauge whether the pace that I was telling the story was too fast, too slow, and whether the twist in my tale was too obvious or not.

I had a wonderful girlfriend and her incredibly supportive family, egging me on to complete my book last year. This year, I’m living with friends on a lovely peaceful farm in the Welsh countryside – the kind of environment which would leave most aspiring authors green with envy.

Completing the project – 53,000 words – was the name of the game last year. To actually finish a novel is very hard – many budding writers won’t have the discipline to keep up the word count. The initial excitement and energy can quickly dissipate, to be replaced by a sense of dread, when one thinks about returning to the neglected manuscript. This is the brilliance of NaNoWriMo, which encourages you to finish the project within the month of November, and then worry about going back and editing the damn thing. As a completer-finisher, it suits my personality perfectly: what point is there in an unfinished book? Perfectionism will get you nowhere, if you never get to the point of publishing.

Tomorrow I have boring chores to do and I will write an ordinary blog post, which is a deliberate demarkation between “Nick the blogger” and “Nick the novelist”. I’m thinking that I’m going to pause my blog, partly because I want to divert my readers to my draft manuscript, and partly because I don’t think that I can context-switch between storytelling mode, and blogging mode.

I’m afraid to lose the comfort of writing my blog. I’m afraid that I’m going to fail. However, it’s a really exciting time: I’m like a kid before Christmas.

The working title for my next novel is High Dependency.

Tags: #writing #nanowrimo