The rewrite, continued ...

For various reasons (life in all its glorious unpredictability, mostly) I find myself re-rewriting my second novel.

It's not an unusual state, after all, all writing is rewriting (finally found the man who said it):

Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is greatly to enhance the prospects of never publishing. Richard North Patterson

My new delivery date, to my long-suffering agent, is 18 April. Here's a beautiful image (from Flickr) for that day:

May my second novel (whose title, at least for the moment, is WRITTEN in WATER) bloom as beautifully, very soon.

Rewrites and primroses

I've just delivered the rewritten manuscript of my second novel, WRITTEN in WATER (as it is now called) to my agent. Wish it luck, please.

I've written about the novel before, here, but it was a while ago (writing a novel is like climbing a mountain, you keep reaching a summit which, you discover, has another summit hidden behind it). And here as well, when it didn't have a good enough title, among other things. And here, if you really want to read any more or go back that far.

And primroses ... :

because they thread their way through the novel and so, even though they are outwith the season, as one of the characters says in the novel, this photograph, which came from here (thank you) is to wish my manuscript luck when it lands on the publisher's desk, and because I hope the primroses will bring me luck too, and show me that this summit really is the summit (for this novel).

Nine months later ...

... and exactly the right amount of time since my last post, because I have just delivered the manuscript of my second novel to my agent.

The process hasn't been painless, but what birth is?

But the most important thing I've discovered is that a story can be told in many different ways without its heart getting lost or its soul fragmented. This novel has been through several drafts (all quite different) but the story at its heart has grown stronger each time. In fact my trouble is that I fail to get to the heart of the matter quickly enough. I circle round it but fail to find the courage to dive in until the very last minute. I love words so much that I let them lead me where they will instead of heading (wrong word, hearting) for the heart of the piece as early as I can.

Robert Frost said:

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

And he's so right ... my agent, the wonderful Heather Holden-Brown suggested, when I delivered the second draft in the middle of April, that she still didn't care enough for my protagonist. It was only when I went where my protagonist went with my own heart, when I cried and laughed with her as I wrote, that I got there ... no surprise, of course, but it is the thing I avoid doing because it means I must feel too ... aren't we strange creatures? The very thing I need to do to make the novel work is the very thing I avoid doing until I absolutely have to ... so frightening, sometimes, these things called feelings.

The novel, by the way, is called WRITTEN in WATER now (adapted from John Keats's epitaph for himself and suggested by a friend). And it was sent out to publishers on Tuesday. So now we (my agent and I) wait to see who'd like to publish it ... nerve-wracking and exciting all at the same time.