Yay! I am very excited to tell you that my next book is done. Well, at least the current draft of it is, so I’m taking that as a win!
This has been a bit of a shock book to me, in that I wrote it in about six weeks – or maybe I should call it a pleasant surprise as it’s a little bit different from my previous two books which both took a decade to write and let loose on the world.
I absolutely loved writing the first draft of this novel. It’s everything I’ve been wanting to write for ages: a dark and suspense-filled crime novel, complete with some seriously evil twists and turns. Crime fiction is the thing I love writing best, so I’m floating on cloud nine at the dastardly deeds I’ve created.
I’m also not a fast writer at all, so I’m actually a bit astounded that this book landed on the screen (or was dragged there, kicking and screaming) in such a short space of time. I put this down solely – or at least, mostly – to a little strategy of planning each ‘beat’ of the book on bits of paper and sticking them to my fridge. Every time I went in there for the milk, I moved things around or added another strip until the ideas were pretty much in the right order. There are advantaged to being a serial tea drinker! I use Scrivener and love the way I can move chapters and scenes around so easily. But I’m a visual planner still a pen and paper girl at heart, so bits of recycled paper stuck on the fridge that I could keep shifting as I had new ideas definitely indulged that part of me. If it works, who am I to knock it?!
As I look down at my desk now, there’s a neat stack of paper, pages mounting up into the hundreds, all covered in perfectly printed words. It won’t be like that long, though. Soon it’ll be covered in aqua ink as I put the book through its paces. There was a time that I swore by editing in pink, but I must be getting old because I find it too difficult to see what I’ve written anymore.
More news to come on this book. For now, though, I’m truly looking forward to the next couple of months because I really love editing. Luckily!
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