A couple of weeks ago, I finished writing my second novel. I thought I might finish it sooner, but the closer I got to it, the further it seemed to get away from me.
I don’t know how it is for others, but I feel incomplete until I’ve put that final word on (virtual) paper. It’s a funny thing to explain, but until then, you’ve got all these words in you and a vision of something, and you feel as if you’re racing against time to get it out there, lest you get hit by a truck – or, more scarily, the inspiration, the vision, disappears. It feels like a kind of magic, and that’s great, but it’s scary, too, and until you get it all in the bottle, there’s no rest.
The sense of relief – and release – once you’ve got it on the page is immense. You type the final full stop, sit back in your chair, and think, “Phew, I did it.”
It’s a fleeting emotion because, almost immediately, you’re aware of all the flaws in the manuscript. By the time you’ve got to the end of writing a book, you generally know the things you should have done differently and need to change, on top of which you have a sneaking suspicion that it might all be crap anyway. You think you’ve finished, but you know there’s a lot more work to do – but at least now there’s a version outside your head.
Finishing a book is tough. I’ve only written the two, so I’m not sure I can apply the term ‘generally’ yet – but, so far, I know the ending well before I get to it. I may even know how to approach it, what the tone should be, and so on – I did in the first, not in the second.
With this book just finished, I fluffed around, uncertain how to get from where I was to where I needed to get. There are many different ways to write the same scenes, and when you consider the scenes are apt to variation, there’s a lot to figure out. That’s why it took me longer than I hoped to get it finished. I couldn’t get it right and spent a lot of time staring off into the middle distance. I’d ask myself: what does it mean? What am I trying to say? What is he thinking? She? How would they react?
All of that is accentuated by the fact that nothing comes after this. There’s a full stop at the end of this, which means it has to make complete sense in itself and that all the myriad loose ends need to be addressed – if not tied up – in the few pages remaining to you.
But anyway – I did it. And it’ll do until I come to the second draft.
For now, it goes in the bottom drawer. I’ll clear my head of it, and when I get around to it again, I’ll approach it with fresh eyes. More of that later.