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...

Finished...

OK, so, well, it's done... the editing of the work in progress is finished. It is a work in progress no longer.

I am a little on the exhausted side but, on the whole, cautiously pleased with how the thing's turned out. A finished novel is never quite the towering work of genius (ahem) that you envisaged at the outset but, from my far from objective position with my nose permanently grazed from the grindstone, it looks OK.

As I said to my editor, Will, ideally instead of sending it off to him (which I now have) I would leave the book somewhere for three months to forget about it, then read it with fresh eyes, cry 'Aaargh' or something articulate like that and set about re-writing the whole thing.
Or maybe I'd say 'Hmmm, not so bad after all..'
Who can tell?

Anyway, the point is, it's done, it's sent and there's nothing more I can do about it for at least a fortnight because I'm going away.
I shall be out of email and blog contact because I'm going where there's no internet (my parents house) or internet cafe (the town nearest to my parents farm) so I shall be incommunicado.

It'll be good for me.

Let me just say it again - the book's finished!
Hooray...
For those who haven't picked it up from various ramblings here over the last few months, it's called Not One of Us. At least for the moment.
I really should update the Work in Progress page on the website... remind me when I get back... got to go and pack.

Have a fab Easter everybody!

I have a cunning plan...

OK, as I seem physically unable to bring the writing of the work in progress to an end, I have done something which is going to make me finish it this week. It was supposed to be finished last week – in my mind at least. And we’re talking first draft, here, not the totally finished, hand-it-to-editor item. Sigh…

So, what have I done?

I have agreed to edit a friend’s non-fiction book.

In fact, since he is in a hurry, I have not only agreed to edit it in a kind of 'oh yeah, when I've got a minute' way, I have agreed ona timetable for the week following half term:
Sunday - he will email the final article to me.
By Wednesday evening I will email his 50 000 word typescript back to him, liberally laced with the speech bubbles of MS Word’s ‘track changes’ feature.
He will then pore over my suggestions and all the punctuation I have provided and we will email back and forth (apart from when I’m at work on Thursday) until Friday evening.
He will then come over on Saturday and we will work on the whole thing most of the day.

In other words I WILL HAVE A WEEK WHERE I WILL BE MORALLY UNABLE TO WORK ON THE WIP. I therefore must finish this week.

And, then, following this frenzy of punctuation and suggestion, I will be mentally cleansed and prepared for the hard-core editing of my own work necessary if I'm going to get the book to Will (my editor) before Easter.

So, it’s simple, if you want to force yourself to finish your book, agree to interfere with somebody else’s.

Getting There

When you start revising bits of your book, one thing leads to another. Bringing in one of my characters earlier in the action seemed like a relelatively simple manoeuvre but, once I’d started, all sorts of other things became necessary so that she could appear sooner. And those necessary things are having a dramatic impact on the book – for the good, I hasten to add. Its original sprawl over the first hundred pages (me writing my way into the book) is being tightened and focused, the cut and paste functions of MS Word, not to mention the option of being able to view two documents side by side onscreen, have never been so busy on my laptop. And I’m getting there. I’m a much happier writer this week than I was last. Events are more clearly defined, as are motivations, characters are getting sharper. I’m pleased.

During a particularly doldrummy period over the weekend I read an interview with John Mortimer in which he said something to the effect that he’s only happy when his writing’s going well and if it’s not going well he’s in despair. Well I know exactly what he means. It just messes up my whole life if the writing’s going badly. there was a phase when it felt I was never going to get this book right and, as this is the second major re-write, that felt like a big deal.

Does anybody know which famous author it was who said that what they liked about writing was the sensation of just having finished a book? That they didn’t particularly like the process of writing? I know I’ve read it somewhere but I can’t remember who said it, though I have in mind it was a woman writer. Probably means it was Hemingway knowing the accuracy of my memory. But that’s what I’ve felt like recently – the pleasure in writing had begun to fade and I was beginning to just look forward to having finished. Now the pleasure in the process is back, thank goodness!

By the way, in case any of you aren’t regular readers of Tomorrowville, do go over and read David’s latest post on point of view. It’s fascinating and may spark an answering reflection here in a couple of days when the cut ‘n’ past is assuming manageable proportions…