I’m very excited to reveal that The Iron Line is now in its final stages. I’ve been agonising a lot this year about how I wanted to publish it – whether I was going to pitch it to agents and publishers, or take a different route. Last week I wrote an article for online news andContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 10: Going indie”
Category Archives: Anatomy of a Novel
Anatomy of a Novel Part 9: Troubleshooting
It’s taken four months, but I’ve finally finished the first read-through of The Iron Line and I’m starting to overhaul it. I naively thought the second book would be easier than the first – because I know what I’m doing now, right? Wrong. The first draft of Greythorne took three months to write and I let itContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 9: Troubleshooting”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 8: The first edit
After letting The Iron Line ferment for six weeks or so, I’ve just started editing it. This first read-through is always a bit painful, although it has its upsides too. Sometimes I come across a particularly well-turned phrase and get a little ‘I can’t believe I wrote that’ thrill, but more often than not, allContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 8: The first edit”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 7: The first full draft
Well, it’s done. I’ve finished the first draft of The Iron Line. I should be ecstatic, but to be honest, I feel a bit, well…flat. I can’t remember how I felt when I completed Greythorne, but I think it was probably more elated than this – probably because it was the first time, so it felt likeContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 7: The first full draft”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 6: The paper anniversary
When my husband Tristan and I first started dating three years ago, we had a ‘food-for-stories’ deal – he’d make me dinner and in return I’d read him the next chapter of Dragonscale, the long-running young adult fantasy novel I’d been writing off and on since 2007. We each thought we got the better endContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 6: The paper anniversary”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 5: #amwriting
There are few things more frustrating as a writer than seeing all your writer friends using #amwriting on social media when you’ve hit a slow patch. Thankfully though, despite a few false starts, I can now once again claim to be part of that select, productive group (hooray!). I recently left the full-time workforce toContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 5: #amwriting”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 4: Dead ends and U-turns
As I’ve said before, books, like laws and sausages, are things you may not want to see getting made, and this is why. I think there’s a popular perception that authors just come up with a great idea and then write it down, but the reality is much messier. It’s not so much taking aContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 4: Dead ends and U-turns”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 3: Road trip
In this series of posts I’m going to be giving you a warts-and-all look at the process of writing my next novel. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2. A couple of weekends ago we had to go to a wedding at Camden, which is a smallish town at the northern end of theContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 3: Road trip”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 2: Post-project blues
In this series of posts I’m going to be giving you a warts-and-all look at the process of writing my next novel. Part 1 can be viewed here. A couple of days after I wrote about unexpectedly bombing out of NaNoWriMo, this article from ArtsHub, ‘Eight ways to deal with post-project blues’, fortuitously popped upContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 2: Post-project blues”
Anatomy of a Novel Part 1: Learning to be kind
In this series of posts I’m going to be giving you a warts-and-all look at the process of writing my next novel, an Australian Gothic thriller tentatively titled The Dark Before the Dawn. The first week of NaNoWriMo is over, and to be honest it’s been a bit of a bust for me. I haveContinue reading “Anatomy of a Novel Part 1: Learning to be kind”
