Back to the Book

I haven't written for a few days - so confused, at first so delighted with the first free-flowing 11,000 words of Islanders  and thinking "this is it!"  I've always wanted to write a dystopia - this isn't the first attempt - but at last I had a concept - and all my projections and extrapolations came out clear and bright... I was happy.   Then I began to fret "what's actually going to happen in this book?  What's it about?  How can I describe it?"      Then I found a book on Saturday that was perfect research for Conscience and began to fret that I ought to go back to that... and so on.   So this morning I did two things: first I gave the Agent a gentle prod - and then I went back to have a look at TRF.  I had actually been editing/updating and there were two issues I felt needed to be better dealt with.  So I re-wrote and added a great deal to the scene when Leo and Lucy meet in the restaurant...it's now much better.  I told the Agent that I regarded the version I sent her as up for discussion and alteration, but I hadn't wanted to change much in case she had another idea which made everything I did unecessary.  However, after waiting two months for her judgement, I felt I really needed to improve the work any way.

In some ways I am finding it easier to write certain things than I would have 3 or 4 months ago - something about distance of some kind I think - whether this means I will be further nourishing the sex scenes (in the light of the success of that book) perhaps to resolve the oral sex issue.  I still slightly shrink from that - not from writing it, but the prospect of the former LO reading it.  Or perhaps his wife won't let him read another novel by me in a hurry!