Beyond the Quarantine
The first draft of my new novel is done. Now if this were a movie I would type THE END at the foot of the page, centre it neatly, and open a bottle of champagne. If it were a high budget movie I would knock off the neck of the champagne bottle with a gleaming sword formerly the property of a French Hussar. In reality when you type those two words at the end of the first draft, your work is just beginning. All you've done is gone out in the dead of night and dragged your stone back to the studio. Now you have to sculpt and shape and smooth it.
But it is a significant platform. I'll probably celebrate by having a mug of tea and two wheat-free ginger biscuits. We know how to live high on the hog in
The issues are pretty huge. For one thing I got half-way through and discovered I wanted to change the geographical setting. For another I made a massive plot-swing at about the same point. Then the character I believed to be the protagonist turned out not to be. Finally (no, not at all finally, because I just can't stand to list all the challenges available) the notion that a particular character was telling this story - though not in the first person - got me in a sudden stranglehold right at the end of the first draft and I've only just got her fingers off my windpipe. We're discussing it, like reasonable people. My character and I.
Um.
It would be sensible now to put the novel aside for a while. Let it dry out. Crystallise. Detumesce. All those things. Plus I have lots of other things to do. I have a script of Do The Creepy Thing to write. Plus a new William Heaney wants attention. Plus plus plus. But what I really want to do is to rush at it with the cold chisel and the hacksaw and get the electric sander on it. Today I can see the wings, but what if I can't tomorrow?
Does anyone have the faintest idea what I'm talking about?
(For the previous blog in the Quarantine Project click on "archives")
