Writing, Rewriting and Everything in Between

It's been a little while since I last posted anything here.

I'd like to say that's because I've been carefully considering what to write next, but the truth is rather less interesting. Work has been busy, the writing has continued, and an extraordinary amount of time has disappeared into editing, rewriting and occasionally wondering why I thought something was a good idea in the first place.

Since my last update, State of Containment has been published. That means there are now two novels out in the world, both very different from one another, and both having taken rather more work than I probably appreciated when I started.

There's also Local Records, the online companion story unfolding through the fictional Atropos Institute website. It follows the same five days as State of Containment, but from a different perspective. I've enjoyed developing that side of things, particularly the opportunity to tell parts of a story that wouldn't necessarily belong in the novel itself. The entries can be found under Blog > Local Records on the Atropos Institute website.

And then there's what comes next.

The novel that keeps changing

I've been spending a considerable amount of time on another novel. The characters are there, the story is there, and there's enough about both that I want to see it through.

Getting it right has been another matter.

The manuscript has already been through several substantial rewrites. At one stage it had grown to around 85,000 words. After another round of revisions, it was back down to approximately 51,000.

That's a fairly substantial amount of writing to remove.

It would be tempting to see that as going backwards, particularly when so much of the writing process seems to involve watching a word count gradually increase.

But I'm learning that more words don't necessarily make a better story.

Some scenes have been removed because they weren't moving anything forward. Others have been rewritten because they weren't quite doing what I needed them to do. A few ideas that seemed important at the time turned out to be considerably less important when I read them again.

And occasionally, something I've spent an entire evening getting right has disappeared the following evening.

It's a peculiar way to measure productivity.

The challenge now is working out what the story genuinely needs, rather than adding words simply to bring the total back up. The characters are worth keeping, and I still believe there's a good story there. It just needs to find the right shape.

I'm not particularly interested in making a novel longer for the sake of it. I'd rather have something that holds a reader's attention and leaves them wanting to turn the next page.

Whether I've quite achieved that yet is another question.

Something a little different

Alongside the novels, I've also been working on another project.

It's something of a departure from what I've published so far, and has brought its own collection of challenges, decisions and unexpected amounts of revision.

I'm keeping the details under wraps for now, partly because there are still things to finish and partly because I'd rather give it a proper introduction when it's ready.

All being well, there'll be more to share before the end of the year.

Finding the time

Of course, all of this is still happening around a full-time career and the usual demands of everyday life.

I've mentioned before that writing tends to occupy the evenings, weekends and whatever time happens to be available. That hasn't changed.

What has changed is the number of things competing for that time. Writing new material is only part of it. There are edits, covers, production decisions, websites, promotional work and the occasional attempt to understand why something that worked perfectly yesterday has decided not to work today.

It's all part of learning how to do this properly.

So, while the updates here have been a little sparse, the work itself certainly hasn't stopped.

I'll try not to leave quite such a gap before the next one.

Although, given the current state of the manuscripts, I probably shouldn't make any promises.