"Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book...?"

The best part of six months after I finally finished writing the first draft, my latest attempt at a novel is finally ready to be released into the wild, for friends, family and any interested parties to have a look at, if I am able to convince any of them to do so!

Yes, Another Life is finally in a fit state to be seen by the outside world.

I had hoped to have had it ready much sooner, but in the end it proved to be a very busy second half of the year. I had always planned to leave it for a couple of months after I'd finished the first draft, to be able to come back and proof-read it with a fresh eye at the beginning of September. The proofing stages always take a little longer than they perhaps otherwise might for me, because I like to print the novel off and go through it on paper, rather than reading it on a screen, so once I've scribbled all my changes on it in pen, I then have to go back to the keyboard and implement these on the actual manuscript.

That was all done by the end of September, but then I started getting rather busy with other things - mostly, producing our Doctor Who 50th anniversary coverage at work, and putting together our annual Treasure Quest Live stage show in aid of Children in Need. So I ended up grinding to a halt halfway through putting the changes onto the computer, and only picked up the thread again at the end of November.

Once that was done, I married the two halves of the novel together. It's told from the first-person perspectives of two characters, Rachel and Linda, with the novel alternating between them from chapter to chapter. I'd written and proofed them separately, so I now had to marry the two parts together, try and ensure they worked, and go through it all again for a second proof-read in its finished state.

I finished that this week, and put all the new corrections and changes through today. I've put an order in to print off a few copies via Lulu.com so I can try and force some copies onto friends and work colleagues to see what they make of it. But if anybody would like a PDF copy to read on a Kindle or the like, do let me know - I'm always happy to get as many people to read my work as possible, so long as I can get a bit of feedback!

But what sort of a novel is it, you may want to know before deciding if you want to read the thing?

It's a small, fairly simple story. The tale of two women who have each lost someone very close to them - Rachel is desperately trying to get that person back, while Linda knows that she never can. This is the story of how they try and rebuild their lives, and what ultimately brings them together.

I am pleased with it. I think it's got a good central idea, and is decently written. It's certainly the best novel I have so far written - but then again, you'd always want that to be the case with your most recent work, wouldn't you?

The only slight reservation I have is that it's still too long. In the proofing process I managed to get it down from 81,299 words to 74,854, which is better but still longer than I'd originally envisaged. So if you do read it, any recommendations of what I could cut would be very gratefully received!

After I've managed to get some feedback I'll try and work on any changes that come out of that, and then, sometime next year, begin the long slog of submitting it to agents and publishers. And then...?

Who knows.

Come in Number Twelve

 The end... or the end of the beginning, at any rate.

Eighteen months after I started it, and following a complete grinding to a halt and then a gradual resumption of activity, I have now finished the first draft of my latest novel.

Yes, Another Life lives.

Having done quite well on writing a little of it every day from the beginning of January until the end of March, I then had a bit of a collapse in April. However, from the first of May onwards I wrote something every day until last Thursday (when a long working day at the Royal Norfolk Show rather wiped me out), and throughout June sometimes wrote a few thousand words a day, keeping things motoring along nicely.

The end came unexpectedly. The novel is told from two different first-person perspectives, of two ladies called Rachel and Linda. I knew I was coming towards the end of Linda’s section, but I hadn’t actually been writing it all in order. I’d ended up writing bits and pieces from across her story, and it was only after finishing a chapter with a final few hundred words today that I checked my notes and realised...

That’s it.

Well, that’s it for the first draft, of course. Nowhere near the end of the work. As always with any first draft of a novel I’ve written, the overriding feeling is one of disappointment in myself. Because, as is frequently the case, I think that I have a very good central idea at the heart of Another Life, but I am far from sure that I am a good enough writer to pull it off.

I don’t entirely hate the whole thing. I am fairly pleased with Rachel’s section, which is surprising as she was the one I thought I knew least and would have the most trouble writing. But I think she actually ended up living and breathing as a character far more effectively, whereas Linda... Perhaps it’s too early to tell.

My intention now is to do absolutely nothing with it for a couple of months, just leave it to settle so I can come to it with a fresh eye and start the process of editing, cutting, improving... I already know it’s too flabby – I had envisioned a short, pacey novel of 60,000 words or so, but the first draft stands at 81,299. Which is far too long for the story being told – too much waffle.

But at least it exists. Improving something is always easier than trying to conjure it out of the air. As to whether it gets me anywhere... Time will tell.

Missed a day

My promise to myself to try and do some writing, even just a little bit, every day in 2013 has already come unstuck. I was crossing off today's date on the calendar this morning when I realised I'd forgotten to write anything yesterday. So that lasted all of twenty-four days.

Bugger.

Still, I blame The Reign of Terror coming out on DVD. I went to have a look for it yesterday afternoon, as there's a shop very near where I work which usually has the Doctor Who releases out as soon as they get them in stock, usually three or four days before the official release date. They did indeed have them on display, but it turned out their card machine was knackered, so I had to head off to the nearest cashpoint. This was after having thought to myself "I won't need a coat, it's literally just outside the door..."

This on a day when temperatures as low as minus ten had been recorded in some parts of Norfolk. Brrrr!

Anyway, I'll try and get back on track with Another Life, although as you can see from the above photo I'd literally only been doing tiny little fragments. I haven't sat down and done a sustained piece of work for a while now. Rachel's section is nearly done, although towards the end I have fragments of it rather than a whole linked section - I need to sit and go back through it, the news bits and the stuff I did on it last year, before I can have the first draft of her part settled, and then move onto work concertedly on Linda's section.

Elsewhere... I await a verdict on Wicket from the latest publisher to whom I have sent it. I was discussing this with someone at work the other day, explaining how I was very lucky to have been given the opportunity to submit to it to this particular publisher, as they don't usually look at any unsolicited material. This person asked how they would usually get new writing then, and I explained it would have come from contacts such as agents.

"Why don't you get an agent, then?" this person suggested, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

I did explain that I have been trying to do that for quite some time, and it isn't really as simple as collecting ten crisp packets and sending off for one. And this was an intelligent person who has a responsible and and important position at work. Clearly, the process of becoming a writer looks a lot easier from the outside!

I've also this week submitted a short story to a new writing website called The Puffin Review, which is just in the process of being set up. No word back from them on that yet, but we'll see how we go.

Genesis of a novel

Nearly a year ago now, in February, I came up with the idea for a novel called Another Life. It drew on a character, a situation and indeed a title that had been in my head for a while, but which I could never think of a way of fashioning into an actual story.

Then, something occurred which rarely happens to me – I actually sat down and thought hard and tried to work out an interesting, hopefully original storyline... And it worked. I suddenly knew what Another Life was, how it fitted together, and how the story should be told. I was so excited that I couldn’t stop getting up and walking around the room, thrilled to have come up with what I thought was a pretty bloody great idea.

Alas, however, something occurred that often happens with my novels. The storyline idea was great, but the actual writing of it, the turning of this idea into words on the page, presented a problem.

Another Life is – or will be – a fairly short novel, told from the alternating perspectives of two women, Linda and Rachel. I won’t talk much about them here, because I don’t want to give much away. But I was pretty confident that I knew Linda well, I knew who she was and how to write her.

Rachel was more difficult. I felt much less certain that I could write well the type of character she needs to be, or that I even knew how to properly express some of the thoughts she has and the experiences she has been through. Because I knew she would be the more difficult of the two to get right, I decided to start with her. I felt if I could do a half-decent job on Rachel, then Linda would be easy.

My estimation was – and still is – that the two characters will get about 30,000 words or so each. Last spring I got about 23,000 words into Rachel, quite a way in, and had to surrender in despair sometime in April. I’d started off with great optimism and enthusiasm for the project, but as Rachel’s section went on I became incredibly glum about the quality of what I was writing.

It just wasn’t good enough. Not for the first time, I was burying a good story idea under poor quality prose.

So I abandoned Another Life, although even at the time I didn’t think it was forever. It was an idea I was too enthusiastic about for that. I just thought I’d have to give it some time, come back to it with  a clearer head at some point, and start again.

Later in 2012, I started writing little fragments of Linda’s section. If she was going to be the easier character to write, I reasoned, I may as well have a go at her before I went back to tackling Rachel. Nothing too intense, just tiny fragments here and there, a few hundred words every so often. But it was all right. It was okay. I didn’t hate myself for it as much as I ended up loathing myself for what I’d done to Rachel’s section.

So along comes 2013, and a promise to myself to get Another Life written. Late on New Year’s Eve, I came up with the idea that I’d try and write something every single day in 2013. Not necessarily a huge amount. Even just a couple of hundred words would do it. But at least something. Some effort being made.

And so far, it’s worked. I’ve done three thousand words this past week – no more than a thousand in one day, and usually just two or three hundred. But if I keep up even this slow rate, I’d still have three thousand words a week, 156,000 for the year. More than enough.

And I’ve been writing Rachel. I didn’t intend to, I just kept having ideas for bits for her section – new parts, or improvements to parts I wrote last year. I even started reading back over some of the earlier chapters I wrote for her first time around, and do you know what? The first couple in particular are... fine. Even quite good, in parts.

So Another Life may not be a complete disaster. It may yet almost be able to capture a little of the notion I have in my head for what it is. I am very confident that it will, at least, get finished.

And then...? Well, we’ll see.