The End (nearly!)

There’s great satisfaction in typing ‘The End’ when I  finish writing a book. What starts life as a hazy whisp of an idea grows until it becomes a story in my imagination, which is then turned into something tangible as I focus on it. Characters which in the beginning are shadowy forms become as real as any flesh and blood person. I can ‘see’ their homes, their lives, their hopes and dreams.

The next stage is pure slog. Getting to the computer every day and keeping my fingers on the keyboard. There’s no great magic to it, other than sheer detemination and a lot of coffee. The temptation to clean out cupboards, or hoover every nook and cranny becomes very real. Anything is better than writing, the vast emptiness of the daily word count.

Slowly word by word, line by line, chapter by chapter, the story is told. Whole days disappear while I’m lost in the world of my characters, emerging in the evening, blinking like a mole esposed to daylight for the first time, into the real world.

The satisfaction of getting to the end of the story is very brief. I give myself a virtual pat on the back as the printer spits out a gratifyingly large heap of papers, before handing them over to be bound into a workable document. This, unfortunately is where the hard work starts.

The first, second, third or however many consecutive drafts it takes, are where the real process of writing a book begins. This is really where the lure of cleaning out cupboards, the necessity of mundane household chores becomes overwhelming. Anything is better than being alone with those words, coaxing them into some sort of cohesive story.

Even then its not over. Once I’ve done all I can, once I’m utterly and absolutely sick of looking at the book, it is time to turn it over to an editor whose job it is to trash the whole thing.  There is nothing more frightening than opening a manuscript that has been worked on by an editor. What was once a sea of black type, is now scored with red. Their detachment and skill enables a good editor to not only look at how the book is written in terms of word choice and sentence structure, but how the story works so what the writer has in their imagination is what the reader gets.  Character motivations, when their actions or speech aren’t in keeping, scenes that don’t have any relevence, or the right impact as well as ensuring the whole thing flows. It’s a very skilled job and not one the author can do themselves.

That’s the stage I’m at now, rewriting the end and adding a few bits to some of the chapters. But nearly there. Hopefully soon The End will actually be The End.