Hi to all.......
I joined last week and have had fun reading everyone else but am petrified to put myself out there - stupid eh? To be honest I think it's more because I'm a bit of a tekkiephobe and sort of want the site to do as I ask it by voice command without me having to navigate it first!!
I have just finished writing my first novel and at the same time finished reading Stephen Kings 'On Writing'? He advises to put it away for six weeks without looking at it at all, before attempting to re-write....any gaping holes are then supposed to jump at you from the page. But Stephen......I just saw my baby off to uni and now you're asking me to put my other baby in a drawer?? Can I do it? Should I do it? Am a thousand words in on novel two but MISSING my first book!
Any advice gratefully received?
Fionnuala

Well, Fionnuala, that’s a cry from the heart if ever I saw one!

I'm afraid Stephen King is correct. If you can leave your ms alone for a month or so, you will see all sorts of glitches and typos and rumples that you missed before. It’s not a hard and fast rule (we don’t do rules on here ) but it is good advice. In the meantime you can be working on your second novel.

It is a wrench when you come to the end of a novel so, if you really can’t bear to leave it alone, you could post a short extract on here and ask for feedback. Just click on upload work in the top right hand corner and follow the instructions. Remember to set it to be visible to WW members only, and say what level of feedback you're looking for. It’s best to keep your upload to under 2000 words so that busy people aren’t discouraged from reading.

Welcome to the site. If you need any help finding your way around just ask me or Nik Perring – we’re here to help – or you can post a question in the Newcomers forum.

Dee

Hi Fionnuala and welcome to the site!

I sympathise - it is agony trying not to look at the novel you've been absorbed in for years - but Stephen King's advice is worth following if you can. I haven't read the whole of 'On Writing', just excerpts, but what I have read really strikes a chord. Putting your novel away for a while lets you gain some distance from it and come back to it as a slightly more impartial reader, rather than its 'mum'! When do you look at it again, the experience is usually excruciating - I have found myself peering through my fingers at the page before now.

I think I only left mine for a month, but the longer the better - Jane Austen would apparently leave hers for a year. Getting on with a new novel is the ideal way to cope with gap. What kind of books do you write? There are lots of specialist groups here where you can meet other people interested in the same kind of thing.

Good luck with everything and hope you find WW useful.

Caro

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I mean the gap

Thanks Dee - much appreciated - your reading and your comments. I will listen to Stephen and Dee and I will mot look at my baby for another month. I think though that I also may do as you suggest and put some of it out there for crit. Thanks so much

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ooops - I meant - 'not' look at my baby....

Hi Caro,
Gosh, this site is worth £35 already!!!!! Thanks so much for your reply. It feels like getting an unexpected card in the post!
The book I have written is fiction, women's though I am unsure whether to label it 'chick lit' (probably because I read somewhere on this site that the genre is the most difficult to get published?!) It is the story of Beth, a forty three year old funny determined songwriter whose world is devastated when her husband has an affair. Through therapy, Beth re-emerges and with her profane humour, her lyrics;she invites spontaneity into her life. She embarks on an affair, visits GAY with her daughter, posts positive internet mantras all around her home, sells songs in Nashville. And that's only Beth, then there's Adam, the errant husband and Meg the daughter and of course the therapist........
I think I may put some of it out there. Thanks again for taking the time to respond. F

Sounds like a fun book with great characters! I look forward to reading some of it when you feel ready to post.

There's a lively Women's Fiction group which encompasses a wide range of styles - reckon you'd fit right in there. There's also a Chick Lit group (I don't know so much about that one but I'm sure they'd be very welcoming too). As a full member you can join more than one group anyway, so you don't have to choose between them!

Caro

Hi, Manicmuse, welcome to the site. I can recommend joining one of the writers forums to upload your work in - click on Writers' Forum top right, and check down the RHS of the screen and you'll see chick-lit, Womans fiction, etc.

Jumping straight in to No.2 is a great way to keep the momentum going. And I always think it's easier to edit something if you're not all fired up about it - so No.2 will probably act as a useful distraction.

All the best with the writing.


- NaomiM

Hi Naomi,
Ta for your welcome and comments. Just had a look on your website and wish you all the very best with your self publishing - 'The diary of...' looks like it might be a good read! F

Hi, manicmuse, and welcome to WW.

Stephen King's and everyone else's advice is spot on, and, yes, diverting the energy into some other writing can help not only to lessen the separation anxiety, it also distances you from Number One further and faster than just leaving it alone. Then you can come back to it with a much cooler, detached, editorial gaze. That's what you need, as Dee says, to see what's actually on the page, rather than what you think you've written. The two are usually not at all the same.

If it's difficult to concentrate on the demands of a whole new novel, one thing that can be quite fun is to write some short pieces about, say, a minor character from Number One. Did any person/situation/idea occur to you along the way that you regretfully had to set aside because there wasn't room for it? You can indulge that now...

Emma

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Meant to say, the novel sounds really fun!

Hello, Manicmuse, and welcome to the site. The scenario of your first novel sounds fab!

I'm another one who can so sympathise with that feeling of bereavement when you come to the end of a novel (or the first draft thereof).

I think ever writer is different and, as Dee said, there are no 'rules'. Some people, for example, are good at cracking on with the next project, and can then come back and edit the first book. Others find it too hard to rid themselves of the first set of characters, and can't flick from one project to another in that way.

I personally have never been any good at taking a break from a book, however many people tell me that not looking at it for a month will give me the distance I need. But there may be half way houses, if you feel too bereft with it 'in a drawer'. You don't have to sit down with the manuscript (or open that Word file) but you can still chat to the characters in your head. They are still your friends, even if you aren't currently writing down their story. You can imagine scenes before the book opens, after it ends, round the edges of it (rather like Emma's suggestion of something based on a minor character?). You can ever jot down little snippets of dialogue and so on - without letting your mind approach directly the actual text and the problems there may or may not be with it. Just flirt with your character in your head. You're the director, they're the actors, you are taking a break between acts - but you can still have a coffee with them backstage. All this stuff will get you even more deeply under their skins - and your brain might just subliminally be solving whatever problems there might be when you come back to the text.

This may, of course, all be complete nonsense. The kids have gone to bed, my partner is out, and I am half way through a saddo bottle of wine on my own at the computer screen. Now, back to my own novel...

Rosy