Actually, of course it is nothing like finished - but I have completed the first draft of GATD and it is not going to do anything now until September. I have told myself I will take a break from writing for August...
I do feel very pleased - for all sorts of silly reasons, because I finished it two days before my deadline, because I wrote 6,350 words today, because whole unplanned scenes occurred - and so on.... I am thrllled. I am also of course terrified, since I wrote this deliberately to do something "commercial" - and I may have missed the tone in some way.... but what else can I do? I couldn't keep writing the Conscience series - my heart wasn't in them. I couldn't keep re-working the feminist in 70s love affair sagas (there were a couple of other ideas I toyed with along with the Romantic Feminist) and I needed to DO something.
Since I wrote it relatively quickly - in about 4 months - I now have lost any fear of not being able to finish. I can do it, that's not a problem. Whether I can do it to internation gibberish standard is another question. I have tried to avoid comment in this book, tried to allow the reader to make up their mind - and using the universal viewpoint is apparently desperately tricky - and not encouraged because few people are able to handle it...as I will no doubt discover when I go back to the book in September.
One of the things that interrupted me was the "Last Things" project. I do hope no one's written a book like this before... I think it could be rather good. I am gathering ideas for it - and will hope to write a little more. The one piece I wrote is very good and different.
Innermost fears
I think what I am always afraid of, especially when I read the review pages, is that my writing will somehow fall between two stools - that I am insufficiently intellectual to drag home the bleeding carcase of inspiration and transform it into something universal that will pique people's intellects as well as their emotions - and so I will never write anything as good as....[your author of choice here]. On the other hand I fear that I am too over-educated and knowledgeable to really manage to write the sort of book which appeals to off-duty middle English working women who like to put their feet up with a good book and buy them by the dozen on kindle.
I was hoping these women would enjoy The Ash Grove, I thought they might be amused by The Romantic Feminist - but the market said "no" - now I am going to throw GATD at them in the hope that they will love it even more than Harold Fry (pah, and double pah!) despite its swearing and filthy sex (which of course we can now include - ever since 50 Shades). Of course, there was once a place for people like me: we wrote well-crafted novesl [eventually] and these were taken from the Boots Circulating Library by ladies in gloves and hats and read on steam trains or at other leisure times. But then I wonder if my slightly over detached emotions make me unable to write really moving emotional scenes.... Anyway, perhaps if I just Google "how to write emotional scenes" I will find the answer!
I do feel very pleased - for all sorts of silly reasons, because I finished it two days before my deadline, because I wrote 6,350 words today, because whole unplanned scenes occurred - and so on.... I am thrllled. I am also of course terrified, since I wrote this deliberately to do something "commercial" - and I may have missed the tone in some way.... but what else can I do? I couldn't keep writing the Conscience series - my heart wasn't in them. I couldn't keep re-working the feminist in 70s love affair sagas (there were a couple of other ideas I toyed with along with the Romantic Feminist) and I needed to DO something.
Since I wrote it relatively quickly - in about 4 months - I now have lost any fear of not being able to finish. I can do it, that's not a problem. Whether I can do it to internation gibberish standard is another question. I have tried to avoid comment in this book, tried to allow the reader to make up their mind - and using the universal viewpoint is apparently desperately tricky - and not encouraged because few people are able to handle it...as I will no doubt discover when I go back to the book in September.
One of the things that interrupted me was the "Last Things" project. I do hope no one's written a book like this before... I think it could be rather good. I am gathering ideas for it - and will hope to write a little more. The one piece I wrote is very good and different.
Innermost fears
I think what I am always afraid of, especially when I read the review pages, is that my writing will somehow fall between two stools - that I am insufficiently intellectual to drag home the bleeding carcase of inspiration and transform it into something universal that will pique people's intellects as well as their emotions - and so I will never write anything as good as....[your author of choice here]. On the other hand I fear that I am too over-educated and knowledgeable to really manage to write the sort of book which appeals to off-duty middle English working women who like to put their feet up with a good book and buy them by the dozen on kindle.
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| Top Tip: It is possible to read Simone de Beauvoir while your hair dries |
I was hoping these women would enjoy The Ash Grove, I thought they might be amused by The Romantic Feminist - but the market said "no" - now I am going to throw GATD at them in the hope that they will love it even more than Harold Fry (pah, and double pah!) despite its swearing and filthy sex (which of course we can now include - ever since 50 Shades). Of course, there was once a place for people like me: we wrote well-crafted novesl [eventually] and these were taken from the Boots Circulating Library by ladies in gloves and hats and read on steam trains or at other leisure times. But then I wonder if my slightly over detached emotions make me unable to write really moving emotional scenes.... Anyway, perhaps if I just Google "how to write emotional scenes" I will find the answer!
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