Fire Station Book Swap Birthday

Last night was the Fire Station Book Swap’s 1st birthday. There was cake (but then there always is) and a smattering of balloons. It was a really entertaining evening with Matt Rudd (William’s Progress) and Andrew Kaufman (All My Friends Are Superheroes and The Waterproof Bible) as guests. Both were extremely engaging and funny; it will be available as a podcast on iTunes soon and I recommend it (it's free!). Am adding Andrew’s books to my ever increasingly Christmas list.

The Big Decision

I had a tutorial this week which went well. I have some further work to do to the manuscript (nothing major) after which I will have one third of a novel which I am content to submit as my dissertation. So what’s the big decision? I start my PhD in January so have until Christmas to finish this novel (albeit I am travelling for six weeks). Should I expend a great deal of effort to complete it? The answer is no. It has been a fantastic learning experience but it is not my first novel. It is not what I want to go out to agents with saying “this is me.” The novel that I will be writing for my PhD is the one that I really want to write. It is also important to remember that publishers will go straight to the sales figures of any previous novels that you may have published and if they are not promising then they are unlikely to back you. I have a suspicion that even if I did finish the current novel and miraculously found an agent and a publisher it would not sell huge numbers. Whether it is a novel, a painting or a symphony, art requires patience and practice. I know that I am in this for the long haul i.e. years and I am not going to go to an agent until I have a novel that I am truly content with.

And Another Thing...

Not only am I writing a novel for my dissertation, I also have to write a 5,000 word 'Writer's Journal.' This includes everything from my inspiration to the choice of setting and the relationship to other published works of fiction. At first I thought this was unnecessary pressure but I'm changing my mind. Since I started drafting the novel last summer, I made sure that I had a framework for the journal saved on the computer. Whenever I had a significant thought or came across a useful quote, I squirrelled it away under the relevant heading. Today I started to draft each section. Research notes, character profiles, the novel plan etc all have their home on my computer but without this journal there would be no place to store all those other key thoughts regarding not the content of the novel but how it is actually written. As writing a novel is often the result of years rather than months of work, it is difficult to remember those thoughts you may have had about an approach to a particular character's voice or why a particular setting was chosen. These may have a subsequent impact on redrafting/revision way off in the future but if its not recorded the meaning of this may be lost. I intend to keep a journal for the novel I write for my PhD even though it is not a requirement. In addition, having those headings on an otherwise blank screen will help identify where the gaps are and where key decisions need to be made.