I was writing another blog, but it turned out miserable.
TL:DR – the market is tough. Your book might be brilliant and still not sell.
Someone else’s might be Fifty Types of Shite and sell. Live with it, keep
writing, and see as a lottery: you have more than one chance to win and just
cos the first draw didn’t deliver, the next might.
Right, onto happier matters. This morning, as I worked at my
Incredibly-difficult-jigsaw-my-husband-bought-me-to-shut-me-up, I had a
revelation.
I’m about 20 pages from the end of the third draft of The
New Thing (it does have a name, honest) and, as ever, I struggle with endings. Sometimes,
as with Inish Carraig, I rush them a little and get complaints (although wanting
more isn’t the worst complaint a writer can have), sometimes I get a little
muddled about what I want to do at the end and sometimes, as with Abendau, I
have no idea of the end. That one took me a quarter of a million words to inform
me that Kare… but that would be a spoiler, so I’ll move swiftly on.
This one, I’ve been dragging my heels on. I have most of the
elements, I know the characters. It’s sort of a mystery so what I hadn’t quite
settled on was the whodunnit (as with any good mysterys, there are a few
contenders even this close to the end, with lots of red herrings laid for all
of them.) The motivation didn’t quite sit right with any of them.
This morning, the angels sang. Even louder than in my last
blog. They told me who the bad guy was. And it wasn’t anyone that I’d expected.
Now, this is a Good Thing. If I didn’t know after writing it
for damn nearly a year, over 60000 words revised three times (so far), and with
two notebooks filled with notes, then my reader will have to be a good’un to work it out.
As ever, my subconscious was working hard. (Thank you long
suffering subconscious). Most of what I need to lay is already laid. I will
need to go back to a few scenes that hadn’t entirely worked and rework them to
lay the trail for this relevation, but that’s okay.
It’s okay because, for whatever reason, I’ve been given a
writing brain that cannot, will not, and does not want to, plan. That means
that I’m resigned to rewrites. In fact, I prefer them to the first write
through.
In this case, it will be a pleasure. The end is in sight,
and now I know what it will be. The magical alchemy has taken a little longer
than usual this time but my brain has delivered. And yes, we shall go the ball,
eat cake, and have a lovely shiny new book.
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