Finished!

This, Blogger tells me, is my 300th post which seems auspicious because the news today is that my work in progress is finished. (For now).

Yes, after 17 months of research and writing, The Black and The White has reached a version I am happy to send off to my prospective agent.

I have to confess that part of me just wants to send it straight off to my editor, Will, at Macmillan, but the other, more strategic, part of me knows that I need an agent. So, agentwards TB&TW will go today. Actually, I'll probably just give him a quick email first to see whether now might be an appropriate moment to land a longish typescript in his inbox. (Just short of 144 000 words).

As ever, it's an odd sensation to have finished because 'finished' is a decision rather than a distinct state.

I know perfectly well that if I were to start working through it again I'd find other things I want to change but it'd be nitty-gritty, change-a-word-here, remove-a-comma-there stuff so I need to leave it and walk away. I need to look up from my laptop screen and remember what it is I do around the place when I'm not spending the majority of my waking hours with my head in the fourteenth century.

Apart from stuff around the house (anybody know a truly mould-resistant sealant for showers?) the biggest thing waiting to be done is the additional material our publisher wants for the autism book. The deadline for that is the end of October so I need to get a move on with that but I'm actually looking forward to it – it comes from a different part of my brain and is so much more under my control than the fiction that it's rather restful!

As well as that, I'll also be starting on the research and thinking for the next book.

It's a bit like 'the king is dead, long live the king.' The book is finished, clear the desk for work on the next one...

Quests

The Black and the White is a quest narrative. (I don't think I'm issuing any prospective spoilers in saying that.) And, at the moment, the writing of it feels a lot like a quest, too.

My central character, Martin, has no maps - nobody did in the fourteenth century, maps were political nor topographical - and he is having to navigate from one known point to the next, never knowing what each day's journey is going to bring.

And I'm doing something similar. While I was writing Not One of Us, I used a technique I have used in writing other novels: I had a general outline, I knew where it started and ended and I had a few 'set pieces' that I was working towards. Each new chapter was plotted as I came to it - before I started writing I would map out, spider-diagram fashion - what was going to happen in the next few pages. It helped me to see the themes I was bringing out, some of the conversations I might want the characters to have, the overall flow of the chapter and how it dovetailed in to what had gone before and was going to follow.

I'm not doing that this time. I didn't actually sit down and decide not to do it like that, I just started writing one day without making a chapter plan and found that things emerged as I was writing which would not have made their way into a spider diagram; so I came to the conclusion that that kind of roughing-out might actually be inhibiting my subconscious. Since this is where I think all my best writing comes from, I decided to give the new, freer, approach a go.

It's having its ups and downs. Like Martin, I'm prone to look up every now and then and think 'where on earth am I and how am I going to get to where I want to be from here?'. But, just as often, I find I'm looking up and thinking 'blimey, didn't know we were going there but I'm glad we did!'

In other respects, my approach is similar to what it's always been. I know the book's end. I know several big things that are going to happen but what happens between them is something the book and I are finding out in our own time.

It's slightly scary. But if I can tap into some of Martin's fear about what's going to happen, that can only be good. Can't it?

Anxious times

I am in a state of anxiety at the moment for which I am prescribing myself long walks undertaken at marching pace. These are mostly working.

Why the anxiety? Well...

We came home from holiday to a million things that needed doing and which I had been putting off before we went away. Repairs to our kitchen roof, sorting out issues with our internet service provider, getting the boiler seriviced, thinking about my Mum’s 70^th birthday… and a ton of other, lesser things. The list seemed to go on and on. Last week saw most of them sorted, at least prospectively (appointments made etc) but there are always new things popping up.

Then there was the awful shock, ten days ago, of a friend of ours being admitted to the Royal Marsden Hospital with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. He’s just started what will be a 2-year course of treatment.

In a less dramatic vein, this Thursday sees both the first full rehearsal of Ancient Stones, Stories Told, my promenade play for Rochester Cathedral, and The Bassist’s AS level results. Both need to go well or the future is going to look bleak.

But, if I’m honest with myself, none of these things actually account for the gut-churning anxiety that’s plaguing me. All of them are difficult in their various ways but I would cope with them.

No, the anxiety-provoker in chief is, inevitably, The Book. The Black and The White. I’m a couple of weeks off being ready to begin writing. Outlines for the big, ‘set-piece’ scenes are beginning to form in my mind and I am frantically trying to decide where to begin the damn thing. (And don’t say ‘at the beginning’ or I may scream…)

I’m anxious because I’m captivated by the story and I DON’T WANT TO GET IT WRONG. I know it could be good and I don’t want to make mistakes at the outset which will compromise the whole thing. I am more excited by this book than by anything since I began my original draft of Testament which induced a similar state of nervous tension. I’m hoping that’s a good sign. Much as I enjoyed writing some of Not One of Us, it was nothing like this.

But there’s a problem. The more I think about my original structure for the book – the structure I discussed with Will – the more I’m convinced it won’t work. And I have a slightly dramatic solution which is also contributing to the lizards fighting in my intestines.

I need to discuss it with Will before I say anything here, so perhaps I’d just better go and compose an email.

More anon.