Writing Novels is like Le Tour de France

Finishing a manuscript leaves me with a funny feeling, much like I imagine the winner of the Tour de France must feel on the Champs Elysees on the last day. There is a sense of achievement as the last words are typed but it is sometimes a slightly empty feeling and when it is a first draft there is also the knowledge that the editing and rewriting is now to come. 

I have just finished the first draft of a novel that I expect, and hope will come out in the Autumn of 2023. When I say first draft, it is actually the fourth time I have written this book. I wrote a version that I wasn’t happy with and abandoned at around the sixty-thousand-word mark and then dramatically changed the structure, the narrator, some style changes, but basically maintained the same story arc. I then did a rewrite and, at the end, thought that it didn’t quite work for me, so it was back to the drawing boards. The Unfinished Business of Fisherman is the third part a trilogy of stories that are linked by themes and characters. The first part of the trilogy was A Long the River Run that was published earlier this year and which I hope to launch in Spring. Erosion, the follow up novel is expected to be published towards the end of 2022.

How & When Do I Write?

Like most people, I need to work to support myself and whilst my writing is a vocation, it is not a career. I write whenever I can, particularly at weekends and some afternoons and evenings after work. I’m lucky that I have a great space in which to work, a book-lined study that overlooks our native garden and the street outside our house. When the COVID-19 pandemic commenced, I began working from home and so had to set some boundaries for myself given that I was doing my paid work and my own writing at the same desk and at the same computer. One of the rules I set early was to dress in business attire for my paid work so that I had a sense of being at work, even when I was in the office.

I know some writers who like to sit in cafés while they write. I can never do that and, I think, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, my handwriting is pretty appalling and although I keep workbooks for notes and ideas, all of my writing from the first draft is done directly on my computer. The second reason is that I find cafés and other public places too distracting and I can’t focus and also, being a curmudgeonly old grump, I find other people generally annoying. I remember one of the modern English playwrights I studied at university describing the process of writing as being almost physically painful and as something you have to grit your teeth about and tackle head-on. It’s not always like that for me but there are days when I can see where he is coming from.

Editing

When I have completed a first draft, I like to put it away for a little while. This can be as short as three or four days or can be a week or more. I then read the whole manuscript and make notes in one of my workbooks about changes I need to make, contradictions in the narrative or characters, scenes to expand on or scenes to delete and generally try and get a sense of the flow. 

I then do the second read which I do more slowly and start marking up the actual manuscript with notes in the margin, words, sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs scribbled out and note about how I want to re-write them. Once that is done, it is time to start writing the next draft and then rinse and repeat as often as needed.

Le Tour de France

I am a bit of a Le Tour tragic and July sees me struggling some days with sleep deprivation. Apart from the magnificent scenery and talk about great food and wine, I like the epic nature of this bike race and it is very much like writing a novel.

There are the days in the peloton when you just cruise along with everything going to plan. There are days that are like sprints when you can seem to get hundreds of words down on paper (or the screen) in a single session and they sometimes come out as good words. 

There are the mountain stages, those days when every sentence is so hard to get down, when you can’t find the right words, or the story doesn’t seem to be moving at all and you wonder why you bother. These mountain stages are sometimes in the middle of the book when you’re quite committed but can’t see the end and have thoughts of giving up. 

The worst days are the days on the pave, the famous cobblestones where everything is an effort, you can’t see for dust and a slightly wrong move sees you come crashing down. I’ve had books that have been a good forty-thousand words into the manuscript when I’ve hit the pave and the manuscripts end up lying unfinished in a folder in the filing cabinet.

I hope next year The Unfinished Business of Fishermen might get to wear a yellow jersey.