I finally sent the second draft of ‘The Dead’ off to the
publisher last week, meeting its deadline by, well, minutes, if I’m honest. The
second draft is the big one. When I send the first draft to my agent and editor
it feels a bit like stepping off a cliff. Nobody else has seen it until that
point, so I have no idea what their reaction will be. There was a huge sense of
relief this time when they both really liked ‘The Dead’, because they would
tell me if they didn’t, believe me.
So they both loved it but there were just a few changes
needed. Even though I have been through this process before with ‘The Drop’ and
‘The Damage’, I was still lulled into a false sense of security by their
positivity, mainly because I was pathetically grateful that they didn’t hate
the book. They really like it! So I must be nearly finished, right? Wrong.
I then had to wade through every comment on my one hundred
and four thousand word manuscript and there were a lot of them. Not every page warranted
their scrutiny but every now and then there’d be a little observation on the
side of a page, “Can we have a little bit more of this….or a little bit less of
that? Could we delete this bit for pace but could we expand on this? How about
an extra scene here, where we see this explained earlier and, I hate to say it,
but do we really need this chapter at all….you know…the one you spent a week
writing.…..oh and that character…you know the one…..sorry but I’m afraid she
doesn’t really work for me at all.”
At this point my heart sinks and not because I resent my
agent and editor’s input, far from it. It’s precisely the opposite in fact. I
really respect their opinions and had to think long and hard about what they had
told me, because I want this book to be the best it can be. I obsess about it
in fact. I picture readers having the exact same thoughts they do. I know what
it feels like to spend eight quid on a paperback and invest a week or two of
your commute time or that precious last hour before bed, only to be
disappointed by the outcome. I don’t want to be responsible for that feeling in
anyone, so I am my own worst critic. I’d rather change or bin anything that
doesn’t quite work long before it reaches the reader.
When I wrote the second book in the David Blake trilogy,
‘The Damage’ I took out two whole chapters because both my agent and editor
thought they were “good but they slow down the narrative”. I think I allowed
myself to use the word ‘bollocks’ quietly to myself more than once, as I
contemplated the time it had taken me to write, edit, re-edit and final-edit
the words I was about to delete but when I looked at the book again with fresh
eyes I knew they were right.
Editing ‘The Dead’ was tricky. I’d specifically asked my extremely
talented editor, Keshini Naidoo, if she could help me get the word count down
and she removed 5,000 words before returning it to me. This was great on one
level, because it saved me a lot of work, but it still hurt a little when I saw
some of the writing I had been quite proud of culled from the page, even though
I knew it had to be done. I then went and made another fifty-five fairly major
changes. I know it was that many because I made a list of all the work I had to
get through to complete that second draft, so I could cross each one off when
I’d finished. Some of those changes took a few minutes, some half a day. The
worst one involved removing a key character that had become an integral part of
the story and one of half a dozen plot lines that were all interwoven nicely
together in ‘The Dead’. As I mentioned, neither my editor nor my agent were
convinced by the character and felt removing this plot line would streamline
the whole story and make ‘The Dead’ a stronger read. No problem I thought, as I
methodically removed every scene involving that character, sobbing to myself
inwardly as more than eight thousand words hit the cutting room floor.
Eventually, draft two was complete and a manuscript covered
in electronically generated amendments – the Microsoft word equivalent of reams
of red pen crossings-out – was off to the publisher. This version will be copy
edited and returned to me with just a few grammar amends and literals that three
pairs of eyes all somehow missed (it happens, believe me) and I’ll get to read
through the whole thing again to check that I’m finally happy with it. Draft
three will be the final version that hits the book shops on April 25th.
We will be launching ‘The Dead’ with a couple of events and some signings, plus
radio and press interviews, which is a fun and exciting way to complete a very
lengthy process. I can go into the launch with a clear conscience because, after
all of the hours of hard work, fretting, editing, more fretting, further
editing and fretting about my fretting…..I am really happy with the end result
and I hope that readers of ‘The Dead’ will be too.
The only bit that remains is the nervous breakdown, which I
have pencilled into my diary for the end of May.
It’s strange though. I had been really looking forward to
completing that difficult second draft and was going to reward myself with a
nice little rest from writing for a while. After a couple of days I was already
reading through my notes on a new book.
The writer Eugene Ionesco once said, “A writer never has a
vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about
writing.” In my case, he could possibly have added ‘with just a few strategic
breaks to read web articles about incoming Newcastle United players during the
January transfer window” but, aside from that, the gist of what he said is undoubtedly
true.
The next book after ‘The Dead’ will be my first that does
not feature David Blake. I have some great ideas for this one and I think it
will work but I know there will be countless man-hours devoted to knocking the
first draft of that one into shape. Then, if I am really lucky, my agent and
editor might both agree that they love it……………but they’ve got just a few,
little changes in mind…………
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