The Writing a Novel Process
(but not in the nice, neat ordered way they tell you about in 'how to write book' books. The REAL way - at least for me and those poor sods like me!)
It is an infuriating business this writing a novel. At least it is for me. I’m not sure Barbara Cartland uttered the amount of effs and jeffs that I’ve just done reading through my typeset 23rd novel which should be pristine, ready to go untouched to the printers… to find some tw*t (insert vowel of choice) fairy has visited it, knackered up line spacings, put a load of duplicate words in one line and created general havoc. It is by far the worst part of the whole process this, and the scariest. When someone on Amazon slags off that ‘this book has not been edited properly’ because they’ve found a spello - trust me, that book has most likely been pored over, printed off in different colours and fonts, read aloud to iron out errors by numerous people… and there’s always one at least little bas… sod that is determined to make it to the final cut.
So here, for your amusement or horror, is the process of book writing laid bare by this individual. A woman who does not plan, a woman who has tried to make sure that every single word must be the right one and in the proper place. The passion for a manuscript comes at a great price - sleep and sanity mainly. My life would have been so much easier if I’d just stayed in admin in the HQ of a big supermarket. Or a trainee accountant. Forty years on and I would still be a trainee…
Let us begin…
1. My editor asks me for a synopsis of my next book. I am not a planner. All I can give her is ‘The lead characters are X and Y and they live in Z. They get together at the end.’ She needs more for the art department and the blurb writer so I make something up. The finished story will bear absolutely no resemblance to this synopsis and when I get to see a copy of the cover I will think ‘Who dees these people she’s drawn?’
2. I attempt to plan my book this time because I really want to be in the Plan-Gang. I buy myself a nice swanky expensive pad (because I’m worth it) and open it and wait for said plan to show itself. My pen is poised ready to record the dictates of my brain which, appears, has gone on holiday to Majorca - indefinitely. I close said book and put it on the shelf with all the other unused notebooks I’ve bought which are really too nice to use so that’s a bit of a result for a stationery hoarder.
Instead, I take out a fresh block of post-it notes and write some details on them and stick them on a wall. I see the joy in being able to do this and move them around purposefully and I want to employ this process SO much but I can’t make it work for me. The few post-it notes stay on that wall until they either drop off or the dog nicks them to chew on.
Once again, all I do is write a load of scribbles on a B & M pad that I don’t feel guilty about wasting.
3. I start to type. Chapter 1. I break that sea of white with one word and one number – I’m in. I have no idea where the story is taking me but the lines cue up in my head and I just carry on writing until I realise it is time to feed the dog/cat/me or wee. It’s a bit like the old days when we listened to record albums, all the songs in order, and we could hear in our brains what was cued up next. I can feel the rumbles of the scene to come begin to manifest as I reach the end of the one I’m working on. No idea how that works, I’m just glad it does. Occasionally I will have an idea about something which might happen further down the line and I jot it quickly down in my cheap notepad. Or, if in the middle of the night, on my arm. Then it’s fun and games the next morning when you try and remember what ‘TURD SATURDAY’ was supposed to mean.
4. I need a title because it has to mean something and the title has to be relevant to the book and blended into it, as surely as sugar is folded into egg-whites to make a meringue. I am always a lot more relaxed when I get the title which either arrives in a blinding flash of inspiration at the beginning or a whirl of panic at the eleventh hour as we are holding up the printing presses. Usually the latter.
5. About a third of the way in I realise I hate the book. I have no idea what is going to happen next and I don’t know my characters well enough to have any opinion of them other than I hate them as well. I don’t know them, I don’t want to know them. They’re all knobheads. I have been here enough times to realise this is not a brick wall but an illusion – it is fog. If I power through it, there will be light on the other side. There always is but in the thick of it, it is scary and I worry that this will be the time when the fog really is a brick wall.
6. At the other side of the fog I am more invested in my characters. I begin to like them a bit now and know what makes them tick. They oblige me by helping me progress the plot. Nice characters. Good characters. Also it’s a good thing to start to get on with them and find some momentum as I will get paid when I present the manuscript which accelerates the need to bypass any limbos.
7. I do not edit along the way. I complete the first draft. The first draft might have seven Saturdays in February and Andrew in chapter one has become Darren by chapter seven and Siobhan by chapter twenty-five. Green-eyed Mary might have blue eyes by the end of the book – and possibly brown ones in the middle. I don’t care. I DO NOT EDIT HERE.
8. I HAVE COMPLETED THE FIRST DRAFT. TREAT TIME. Another nice notepad perchance to join the many on the shelf. Or a pen that I daren’t take out of the house in case I lose it. But deffo booze will happen at this point.
9. Second draft. Ironically this is when I start a semblance of a plan. I make a timeline. Easiest way to do this is by running off a calendar that I can write on, pin point on it where my last chapter ends, then I work backwards. Shape is happening. I now only have 4 Saturdays in February.
10. No title yet? I start to twitch a little.
11. Third draft. Continuity. Mary’s eyes are sorted out. I make sure that the features of my characters are set in stone. Darren is Darren at the beginning, middle and end of the book and maintains his brown hair and 5ft 7” frame throughout.
12. My work goes off to my editor. Whilst waiting for her to come back with her comments, my stomach is in spasm hoping she will not say ‘This is absolute crap, start again.’ Or point at me like Alan Sugar with a ‘You’re Fired’ finger.
13. My editor returns the manuscript, tells me to strip out a murder, cut back on Darren and beef up Mary’s story. It feels a mammoth task. I call this the Frankenstein edit because I have to whip out what I have considered all the essential body parts, including the whole spine, but somehow stitch everything up to be more than my original idea of whole. Somehow this happens. The monster begins to breathe.
14. I send it back to my editor sort of assured that we are on the same page (chortle). If we are…. Thunderbirds are go!
15. If that title hasn’t come yet, I am now flapping like a flock of sea eagles. My editor and agent and I bat titles back and forth. I despair. Four hundred suggestions and none of them fit. Some are actually so bad they make me vomit and have bad dreams. We need a title urgently.
16. WE FIND A TITLE. I can sleep. Wine helps and drugs that people take for hay fever but menopausal women take to be knocked out.
17. Having had a couple of weeks away from the manuscript, when I see it again I spot mistakes and plot-holes everywhere. I work on getting these right and anchoring that title deep into the story.
18. I then do more drafts where I enrich the language, deepen the emotion, this is the fun bit. The one where my creativity can flow. I edit the manuscript looking only at the dialogue, then another at the description, then another for something else - my brain is too far gone at this stage to work out exactly what it is that needs polishing. I am like a blind cleaner, on a mission to get it as near perfect as I can. There is nothing my duster doesn’t touch.
19. Exciting meetings at Publisher HQ. So much goes on behind the scenes: PR ideas, marketing, sales. We sit around a table and they all excitedly tell me what plans they have for the book, which supermarkets and shops have bought them and how many. We scheme and plot world domination. It all feels real and wonderful – and we eat buns and posh stuff from London food shops that I can’t pronounce. Or digest. Do they have to stick truffle and biscoff on everything these days?
20. The cover comes from the art department and it is always a joy to see it. Except that the artist has usually gone off my initial synopsis, which as we know is full of lies, so a bit of tweaking has had to go on. Well, a lot if I’m honest.
21. My work goes off to the copyeditor and comes back with a million notes on it. Mostly pointing out glaring errors that I curse myself for not noticing and basic grammar mistakes I should have grown out of at age twelve, and highlighting awful things that I have written like gentile instead of genteel/genital. She is a marvel. I feel as if she should be writing the book and I should be cleaning toilets. I get back her finished manuscript after she has put it through the washing machine of her expertise. Anything to add, she asks? The fool.
22. …because magic occurs. Something happens to me and turns me ANAL with the eyes of a hawk fresh from getting his new glasses at Specsavers. A bit late in the day, love, says my brain. This is usually panic-driven because I am terrified of overlooking errors so I go into overdrive. I trawl through every word of my manuscript, realising that I have written ‘just’ too many times on one page. I take ALL the ‘justs’ out. I read it again and have to put some ‘justs’ back in. My copyeditor’s hair turns white. She tells me it is okay to have a little natural duplication and working through a thesaurus changing every ‘said’ to a different word is counter-productive because the eye smoothes over many words that are doing a filling in job and don’t need to snag the eye. She’s right. Again. As always.
23. I like to look over the finished clean manuscript with all the mistakes ironed out. Still, you always miss a couple because you are poring over it so intensely. My brain now starts to wake me up at 4am. It’s like having Thora Hird in my head nudging me out of my slumber. ‘Oy, berk, Darren can’t be found in the park because in chapter 5 you said it was closed for a month.’ I have no idea how my brain does this but in the background it seems to be constantly scavenging for things to torment me with.
24. I back away from the book, off it goes to be typeset. Whilst I am waiting for its imminent return, I can catch up with some jobs like shaving my legs/moustache, talking to the family, drinking something that isn’t espresso. I try to relax and have a day off but I have lost the ability to know what to do with spare time. I start designing bookmarks/bags/pens. I am the Queen of Merchandise for this reason, because I am obsessed with my book and the people in it who I love with a passion now (and hope they don’t remember that I once hated them loads). I trawl the internet for promotional goods that will look good with a sunflower/owl/Christmas pudding/train on them.
25. The typeset version comes back. It should be perfect because I have pored over it many times. I really have to try not to alter anything that does not need to be altered.
Jesus - what evil effing bitch has hacked into the computer and added loads of errors that none of us have seen until now!!!
I tackle these but must be careful not to overegg the correction pudding. Yes, ‘packed’ would have been a better word that ‘put’, but it’s fine as it is because only one person per million will be reading this thinking, ‘I’d have put “packed” there myself if I’d written that not “put” and because of that I can no longer read this author.’ My stress levels are spiked. I spend half an hour looking at the word ‘was’ and thinking it looks as if it is spelled wrong.
26. By now I am once again so sick of Mary and Darren I wish they’d jump off a cliff. Familiarity breeds contempt (pic below is Darren, I’ve already pushed Mary off).
27. Another proof-reader has also been looking at the manuscript to make sure all is well. She will flag anything suspicious. She always spots something. My panic has now gone into super-panic mode.
28. The typeset manuscript is prised from my hands. It has to go to be bound into a book. NOW. There is no more time to edit. In the words of Frozen Elsa: ‘LET IT GOooooo’.
29. The book is printed. I see it in all its magnificence and I am thrilled. Every single time it catches my breath. Another to add to the shelf and I stare at them all and wonder if I really did write all those or am I actually the conduit for a dead spirit who was denied the time on earth and hunted around for a body with a vacant brain to write them for her.
30. The book is sent off to some lucky (I hope) buggers. One can just hope that the first reviews in are nice as they serve as a suit of armour for that first ‘This is terrible. Do not waste your money. And there’s a bit where I would have used the word “packed” instead of “put”‘, which inevitably comes. I only look at the first reviews to make sure the book is hitting the spot. Yeah course.
31. Mrs Outraged writes a review on Amazon telling people how appalling my book is and encourages everyone NOT to buy it. I look at her other reviews. If mine is the only one she has commented on, I presume she is an evil git from my past or an in-law. But no – Mrs Outraged has 500 other reviews to her name and she has hated the books of every other female writer on the planet, which gives me some comfort as there is safety in numbers. Also she has called the Bible far-fetched and thinks the Brontes were talentless. Although she has given her wart remover 5 stars, so she can be pleased by something. Personally, I think she needs a good shag.
32. We wait to see the public reaction to my new book baby. Will it make the top 10 - if it does… perfick. The pressure is always on. If it got to number 5 last time, number 4 would be good. But in this day and age, my chances are the opposite of slim – they’re fat! There are bound to be a load of romanticesyicys books out there, or TikTok has spawned a load of writers. Or someone on the telly/ a royal/model/presenter/reality TV personality famous for bonking on screen has written a book all by herself, no ghost-writer, no help, all her own work, every word, nothing to see here folks. Fnarr.
Don’t join this profession, people, if you want a job with a level playing field. Or you are doing it for the money. Or the fame. It is a calling, a vocation, like the priesthood or being a brain surgeon. Or you believe that the best writers get their just rewards. Luck has a lot to do with this job - honestly. There are a lot of planets that have to line up for success. Luck is like big old Jupiter.
33. I have a busy schedule of meeting readers, signing their books, having pictures taken with them (note, they will always put on Facebook the one where they look the best and it’s usually the one where you are standing beside them, caught off guard and resembling a gargoyle). And it is wonderful to meet the people who have turned you from an unpaid hobbyist into a pro. In this job you are either treated as a queen or a plague victim. Sometimes you can travel five hours to a venue and you are greeted with refreshments, flowers, joy. Sometimes you have to physically become dust before a venue organiser asks, ‘Would you like a drink?’
34. I return home from far-flung destination exhausted to be greeted by a message on Facebook saying ‘I wish one day you would come to ‘far-flung destination’ (the one you’ve just come from) I’d love to meet you.’ And an email from my editor asking me for a synopsis for the next book…
One of the best articles on the dreaded Process I've ever read! I feel I should start a new Substack called Notebooks For Best which would be entirely about fancy notebooks that are too good to write in. Guaranteed hit! 🤣🤣🤣
Such a good read! For my part I am just entering the fog (novel 21) and it's horrible as you say. What I don't understand is that it's always there, no matter how well set up you think you are!