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Editing, the Second Draft and Serious Business
So the second draft of Ink for Thieves is finally finished. I’ll probably need to give it one more read through before I pass it on to my brave and wily beta reading team, but for now the big chunk of work is done. At least, on that book it is. The next couple of months will see more pulling out of hair and knuckle chewing as I read my way through the rough draft of Dead Zoo Shuffle and realise exactly how much delicate surgery that book needs before it’s readable- along with plenty of merry hacking, amputating and other bloody works.
Last night I remembered something Stephen King mentions in his book, On Writing. He said, (I may be paraphrasing slightly here) that you “shouldn’t come lightly to the page”. The first time I read that I don’t think I really understood what he was talking about. I thought perhaps he was suggesting that writing, real writing, was always hard work and could never be fun, which clearly wasn’t true at all. Now, having slogged my way through my first novel-length edit and emerged with what is, hopefully, a much shinier and sexier book, I think I’m starting to understand.
I think he’s talking about an acceptance of the sheer work involved. Yes, it’s fun and there are moments when the story suddenly comes together and the characters wander off to do what they want, and then the writing is exhilarating, but what you are doing is serious business. It is art. And you may well have to write this damn book over and over again until it is any good, and that thought is daunting, but no one ever said this was going to be a walk in the park, where gnomes massage your toesies and butterflies waft their secret songs into your ear holes. Much of the time in fact it’s rather more like heaving a giant dung ball on your back (that may or may not have a diamond secreted in it somewhere) and hauling it to the top of an impossibly tall mountain while goats with sarcastic eyebrows frown at you in a judgemental manner. But that’s alright because this is hardcore, this is SRS BSNS.
At least, I think that’s what he was talking about.
The Instant Kindle Convert
So, my lovely boyfriend bought me a Kindle for my birthday.
Previously I had remained rather neutral on the subject of e-readers. I’ve always been such a “paper” book person, you see; I work for a company that make beautiful hardback editions of classic books, I’ve a degree in illustration, and I studied bookbinding at art college. Most telling of all, there are just piles and piles of the things at home, so many that we sort of exist in a fort made of paper and text. I like the smell of them, the physical weight of a paperback or a hardback. In this, I thought, I would remain a luddite. Touch screen phones and wi-fi, yes, but e-readers- probably not.
It took me approximately 30 seconds to fall in love with the Kindle.
It is devilishly cute, for a start. The screen looks just like a page, not an electronic screen, and it is not remotely aren’t-I-trendy-and-flash like some electronic devices I could name. It’s easy to use and does everything it’s supposed to. It brings up pictures of fish and birds and Jules Verne if I leave it alone for a little while. But the thing that sold me on it, the thing that made me cling to it like a monkey with a chocolate dipped banana, the thing that means it hasn’t been out of my sight since the 19th is- I can now carry all the books I’m reading with me, all of the time.
This is significant. This is epic.
Because I’m one of those people who tends to be reading more than one book at a time. And everyday, when I leave for work, I have to look at each book in turn and decide which one I will cram into my handbag. This is never an easy decision for me; it’s rather like deciding which of your children to take to Disneyland, and which to send to the workhouse to eat gruel.
But now you can all come! Now we can all go on It’s a Small World and eat ice-cream and prance and sing and cavort with the sinister costumed things!
Um. Anyway, there is that, and the tremendous power of thinking “You know, I’ve never gotten around to reading Stephen King’s The Long Walk…” and hey, by the end of that sentence there it is, sitting on my Kindle waiting for me to read (it was brilliant, by the way, some of the best King I’ve read in years and years). There are dangers, obviously; for a book addict this is rather like being in a giant shop full of book-shaped cakes and the baker saying “They’re free! All free! But careful you don’t ruin your dinner.”
All in all, I think you can consider me converted. No doubt I’ll still continue to buy good ol’ paper books too, but the Kindle is here to stay. Now, on with The Anubis Gates!
Great Books I Have Known: IT by Stephen King
One of the things I want to do now I have this swish new space is a series of blogs about books that have been particularly important to me, or made a lasting impact. I’m not sure how regular these will be (goodness knows I’ve plenty of books to write about in that respect) but I’ll be aiming for around once a month. It’s nigh on impossible to choose just the one book by Stephen King, and I’m sure I’ll be coming back to him more than once for this series, but to start with I’d like to talk about It. No, not that, you filth wizards. The other It.
IT tells the story of the Losers Gang, both as children and adults, as they attempt to face down the terrible predatory force of “it”, a being able to disguise itself depending on the fears of its prey. The creature often appears as Pennywise the Clown, giving an entire generation of readers a life long phobia of weirdoes with painted faces.
It is a big old book, born of those delicious days when King wanted to tell you the back stories of every minor character- a habit that makes for doorstep sized books, but I have always loved that aspect of his writing; King is brilliant at creating believable characters precisely because he seems to know their entire back stories. This book is full of people you can care for and understand, and that is why the terrifying force of It is so effective; if you can remember being afraid of the dark, or watching a horror film you really shouldn’t have just before bed, or have ever felt uneasy walking across an abandoned piece of wasteland, then It will scare you silly. I think it’s scarier than The Shining, scarier even than The Stand, and in fact the only book he’s written that freaked me out more was Pet Sematary, and that is largely because it is so relentlessly grim. No one is safe in It, and no one gets out unscathed. Just the opening scene is so shocking that thinking about it now gives me the creeps.
It’s not a perfect book mind, and aside from accusations of bloat, I have heard people say the ending is very weird, and there’s a scene that takes place in the sewers when the main characters are children that has drawn raised eyebrows and frowns from everyone I’ve mentioned it to, but to me this is King at his best; a story that is relentlessly scary, tremendously compelling and ultimately redemptive. He’s known for his pitch perfect depictions of small town American life, but for me the doomed town of Derry was the best of them, and the one that will haunt me the longest.
Book Meme!
