How do you keep the worry worm at bay, Emma? Don't you start to panic that it's just not working at all?

Having said I don't discuss it, I do tell my agent the vaguest outline, and I guess if I said 'Okay, I've done fat, multi-layered, many-voiced historical, now I'm going to write a sci-fi techno-thriller in the style of Julian Barnes at his dryest', she might tell me that it could be a problem... But in fact the one time I told my plans, for what became ASA, to someone whose input I had reason to take seriously, I nearly exploded that anyone dare tell me what I could or couldn't do, and fired off a huge, furious email to my agent by way of letting off steam... Bless her, she told me not to worry, and just write it how I wanted it to be, which was just as well, because despite being furious I was also panicking that this person was right, and I became horribly and unproductively self-conscious for a week. And in the event it was all fine - said person loved it.

Dare I say that I just don't panic that it's not working at all? Is that very annoying of me? The one thing I go to a lot of trouble to get right is the structure and large-scale pacing, and everything else you can change later. And probably will: the other reason I don't panic is because I know that I don't know if it works until I've finished it. In which case there's nothing to be done except keep writing.

I think that's where all those novels under the bed pay off - it's not that I don't get things wrong, it's that I know that nothing is irreversible (though reversing to change the structure is horribly like turning an oil tanker round in the Channel, which is why that's what I take most trouble over).

But of course I panic over individual scenes - I've just committed one which I'm praying reads as a straightforward, sweet youngish man rather touchingly describing his first love, not as a banal, clichéd outpouring of traditional sentimentality... But I won't know which it is until I can read the whole thing, and I won't be wholly confident till agent and editor tell me it's okay. But there'd be no point in asking them now because it's all about context.

Emma

That's very interesting Emma.
And I do forget that you have been at this a long time. I'm still a relative newbie, in that I've only been at this game for a few years and haven't written anywhere near as much as many of you guys.
I can only hope it all gets easier...sigh.
That said, I too put a lot of store by getting my structure right. I shudder at the thought of kicking off without the pitch properly marked.
HB x

<Added>

And no it's not remotely annoying. It's fab. I wouldn't wish The Fear on anyone because it as utter waste of time and creativity.

Having said all that, I absolutely agree with you about how difficult fears can make writing - maybe I'm only sounding quite so gung-ho about it because at the moment the WIP is ripping along.

I distinctly remember having The Fear about A Secret Alchemy, but always about its relationship to the book trade, not about it itself. Which is where I started to think about just how destructive it can be to creative thinking, to be thinking too much about markets and things while you're writing. Not to say that you shouldn't take ideas from what people (even Sales departments) say about readers - as Jess says, ideas can come from anywhere. Only that you have to learn not to let such ideas derail your ordinary horse sense about what works and what doesn't for you, now, writing this book.

Emma

<Added>

Put it this way, the worst moment in the whole of writing ASA - which wasn't an easy or quick book to write for many reasons, some Second-Bookish, some not - was when I got an email from my editor saying that they were buying the front and inside front cover of The Bookseller to promote TMOL. What's not to like about that? And I looked at Chapter Two, which was being like pulling rotten teeth to write, and reading like it too, and thought 'Oh, God! This will never be the sort of book they buy the Bookseller cover for!'. And had the horrors for the rest of the day, and it was days before I stopped trying to write a book they would do that for, and found my way back to writing the book it really was.

I can totally relate to this one. My first of five years is going out, and I just can't get myself started on the second. I'd rather fill in my tax returns than write. Just the thought of writing makes me feel physically ill at times. It's like something someone might do on another planet!

Heh.

I distinctly remember having The Fear about A Secret Alchemy, but always about its relationship to the book trade, not about it itself. Which is where I started to think about just how destructive it can be to creative thinking, to be thinking too much about markets and things while you're writing.

I think this is partly the trouble I am having. Novel 1's got a long way to go before it's published but things aren't going badly so far. I'm arrogant enough to have decided, in my own head, that it's good, and initial feedback is confirming that for me. I'm well aware that the fact it's good doesn't mean anyone will deign to publish it, nor that anyone will buy it, nor that anyone beyond my mum will like it.

With that initial feedback, there comes the possibility that it really might get published. Obviously that's GREAT but it is the first time it's been a real possibility - however remote it still is - rather than just an entirely fanciful dream.

After a few hours of being excited by that realisation, I woke up with a big YIKES and now every time I write a sentence I dislike I conclude Novel 1 was a fluke and I could never actually sustain any kind of career as a writer.

I do just need to get over myself.

When I'm in the thick of things, I'm actually pretty self-confident, but with it I edit myself very harshly, and will just chuck out huge swathes of writing as I go along without a twinge of regret if they're not working for me. That self-editing trait has been up full volume for the last few months as I honed a final version of my manuscript. Suspect I just need to find a way of turning it down and relaxing into writing badly for a bit.

I have decided I will lock myself into a library for a bit on Sunday and see what happens there!

After a few hours of being excited by that realisation, I woke up with a big YIKES and now every time I write a sentence I dislike I conclude Novel 1 was a fluke and I could never actually sustain any kind of career as a writer.

I read this and immediately thought of the Gary Player (SA golfer) quote: "It's funny, the more I practice, the luckier I get."

Time to kick the doubt-monkey in the arse and tell him to bother someone else for a while.

I know exactly what you mean!! When you finish and submit your first novel, you are torn between excitment in the hope that someone will take it on, and trepidation because that means that you may have to sign up for the second book as well. And what if you can't write one? Or even think of anything to write?

Suddenly all your ideas seem ridiculous, anything you're working on grinds to a halt and you put pressure on yourself all the time.

So in some ways it's quite good when you get pile of rejections to start with, because you realise that it's not going to be snapped up and you can relax. That's when the ideas start to flow again and writing becomes more or a pleasure.

you're definitely not alone on this one

freebird

I get The Fear all the time - even with four novels published or accepted for publication, and another five completed and under the bed, in addition to the WIP.

I think in my case it's not so much fear of 'living up to' what I've written before - more than half of which, after all, has been unpublishable tripe, so that I've learned to live with fact of my inconsistency, and with what failure feels like.

With me it is a more general fear of not being able to do it at all. It's linked to the fact that I have literally no idea where this stuff I write comes from - not helped by never having been a writer or even thought of being one at all until well into my mature years (41), when I thought I knew who I was and what my potentials were. I was always the worst person in the world at inventing any kind of story - at school, for the kids - and famous in my family and among my friends for being a pedantic lawyer who thought only inwardly, dissecting and analysing things to bits, and with absolutely no imagination. The Fear, for me, is also exacerbated by the fact that I am not a planner - that I am simply unable to sit down in advance and map out even in rough terms where a book is going: it has to be instinctive, based on what feels right for the characters as I write, or not at all. All of this means that I live in constant dread of this fragile, mysterious apparent ability to make up stories, so newly discovered in myself, will simply evaporate, and I will go back to being my old, literal, practical, analytical self.

If I allow myself to let in The Fear, it paralyses me completely, to be honest.

Rosy x

Thanks for sharing that, Rosy. What a wonderful new ability to discover, and what a huge surprise it must have been.
Susiex