I know the blog had been a little sparse in recent weeks, but that’s because I’ve been busy elswehere. When I decided to take a short career break of a few months, I set myself several objectives, and I’m really pleased that I’m on track to achieve most. Aside from non-writing tasks like attending a live auction, and having swimming lessons, I set myself a series of writing tasks to complete, and this is where most of my time has been spent.
Aside from Has The Lady Been Yet?, my memoir about looking after Mum after she was diagnosed with dementia, which is out at the beginning of December, and a number of short stories I’mhoping to inteerst magazines in (one success to far), I set myself the task of completing the first draft of a new novel, Glass Onion, and completing the first draft of another which was two-thrids done, called Hush. I’m delighted that I’ve been able to complete both of those tasks, and I’m onto my optional and aspirational objectives for the remaining time. And then the real work starts, of course.
The two new novels are very different in tone and style, and the big job is working on the second draft, with all the edits, changes, rewrites and additions, but I’ll be really interested to see how the two differ. Glass Onion, for the first time, was a totally mapped out and planned novel, everything mapped in note form and then written up, whereas Hush was created using my more regular seat-of-the-pants method of just writing, and seeing where the characters took me. In theory, the former should be less of a massive edit job, as all the peicess are where I intended from the outset, but it will be interesting to see if that’s true.
A break from both for a while though. The biggest benefit to a second draft, in my humble opinion, is coming back to it fresh, after a period away, so you’re not too close to the original writing, or too precious about it.
I’ll keep you informed how I go.
Stay safe,
Kit