{"id":6011,"date":"2019-07-12T10:25:58","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T09:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/stick-or-twist-those-first-novel-dilemmas\/"},"modified":"2019-07-12T10:25:58","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T09:25:58","slug":"stick-or-twist-those-first-novel-dilemmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/stick-or-twist-those-first-novel-dilemmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick or Twist? Those first novel dilemmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

As it happens, it\u2019s the Festival that gives me my entry to today\u2019s topic. A few year\u2019s back, our keynote speaker was the brilliant Antonia Hodgson, author of the massively acclaimed, hugely bestselling debut, The Devil in the Marshalsea<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Because Antonia was also editorial director at Little, Brown, it seemed a little bit like this was just how publishing happened for the in-crowd. You have all these amazing connections. You hone your self-editing skills by editing professionally for many years. You have a glorious outcome.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a nice story in a way, except it didn\u2019t really feel like it was very relevant to an audience of aspiring writers not one of whom happened to be the editorial director of an internationally respected publisher.<\/p>\n

Only here\u2019s the thing \u2013<\/p>\n

The Devil in the Marshalsea<\/em> wasn\u2019t Antonia\u2019s first book. It was her first published<\/em><\/u> book.<\/p>\n

Her first actual manuscript was a 250,000 word vampire novel written long after the whole vampire wave had risen and crashed.<\/p>\n

It was, from the sound of it, a terrible book. And, for all her mighty editorial prowess, it took a literary agent to sit Antonia down and tell her the bad news.<\/p>\n

So what do we make of that? What do we learn?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, we learn that Antonia Hodgson is like us after all. And that she had the guts to ditch one monster manuscript and start all over again.<\/p>\n

But also: writing a first novel<\/a> is hard. It may not work. It may not work, even if you put your intelligent damnedest into fixing up that first draft.<\/p>\n

Indeed, we see this all the time with our editorial clients. Yes, some of them make a brilliant go of their first novel. But for others, the first novel is basically a learning experience. A sandbox where you can make every mistake in the book and then learn to fix it.<\/p>\n

But you can make 100 mistakes and fix everyone and sometimes what you\u2019re left with is a good novel. A technically proficient, interesting, decently written, good novel.<\/p>\n

And (sorry!) that\u2019s not enough in our game. The top few percent of every agent\u2019s slushpile will consist of good, competent novels. No one ever woke up in the morning and thought, \u201cMust head to Amazon and see if they have any good, competent novels in stock.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact is that we \u2013 readers, agents, editors \u2013 want to be dazzled and transported. We want to be blown away. And a novel that gets laboriously worked and re-worked just may not retain that dazzle.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s more than likely that the original concept was flawed. It\u2019s quite likely that the writer didn\u2019t really go for it when designing the basic story set-up. That they played safe rather than going all in. (Or, another error: they went all-in on a story that no audience actually wants.)<\/p>\n

And look: writing is hard.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing here is saying, \u201cYou\u2019ve done this wrong. You\u2019re a terrible human. Go and learn golf, because you don\u2019t belong here on our planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quite the opposite. I\u2019m saying that for many writers \u2013 not all, but most \u2013 there\u2019ll come a point where you think, \u201cThis story isn\u2019t working and I can\u2019t fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s OK. You\u2019re learning. Sometimes a dodgy first novel is part of the learning. Fine. Don\u2019t stress.<\/p>\n

I do think it\u2019s a good idea to self-edit the thing hard. There are two reasons for that. First, you learn by editing. Second, most great novels look pretty dire in those early drafts. You don\u2019t quite know what you\u2019re dealing with until you\u2019ve done some editing work.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s say you\u2019ve self-edited hard. Perhaps you\u2019ve worked with us editorially. Perhaps you\u2019ve taken a course or come to the amazing Festival of Writing.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve done all that good stuff and \u2026 the book still isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

Good.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve achieved your most important task which was to learn a hell of a lot about writing. The best way to write a good book is often enough to write a bad one first. That\u2019s not failure. That\u2019s apprenticeship.<\/p>\n

And you know what? Writing a first novel that goes on to become a bestseller isn\u2019t necessarily the gift you might think it is.<\/p>\n

My first novel did get picked up by agents, did get fought over at auction and did become a bestseller. So I thought, ha! I know how to write books.<\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t, because I\u2019d had a curtailed, weird apprenticeship. My second book was a total disaster. So bad, I deleted it and started again. That\u2019s hard enough at any time, but I was mid-contract with HarperCollins and the whole episode felt seriously alarming. I rescued things, but the experience was no fun at all.<\/p>\n

One last thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of you will want to ask: how do I know? How can I tell when it\u2019s time to move on?<\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t know. Sorry.<\/p>\n

What I will say is that the experience of moving on can be both scary and liberating. Scary, because you have to release something you\u2019ve been highly attached to. Liberating, because once you let go of that attachment, your imagination surges with all the other great things you could be writing about.<\/p>\n

Antonia Hodgson started with vampires. She made her name with historical crime fiction. Who knows what could lie in store for you?<\/p>\n

Tell me about your first novel dilemmas below … consider it a Clinic for Worried Writers. The doors are open …<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As it happens, it\u2019s the Festival that gives me my entry to today\u2019s topic. A few year\u2019s back, our keynote speaker was the brilliant Antonia Hodgson, author of the massively acclaimed, hugely bestselling debut, The Devil in the Marshalsea. Because Antonia was also editorial director at Little, Brown, it seemed a little bit like this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJericho Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/stick-or-twist-those-first-novel-dilemmas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stick or Twist? 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