The Ups & Downs of Writing Fiction
The last time I did a post about my writing, I was wondering if, at my age, I could make further withdrawals from the bank of my creativity without placing it in overdraft.
I’ve compromised by reviving a novel I drafted in 2001 but consigned to a floppy disc, and then a CD, until a moment like this came along.
Now, with seven published books under my belt, I feel more capable of revising it and, more or less, of achieving my original literary intention. I entitled the manuscript: “Vacation at Hillsend”.
The family holiday theme of the novel was inspired by Fiona Walker’s debut work, “French Relations” published in 1994 and written at age twenty-five. On Goodreads.com, it’s now her favourite work but I came across it as a Coronet paperback (ISBN-0-340-76587-9) and, being attracted by the cover, bought a copy just after it came out.
Today, Fiona Walker is deservedly a multi-million copy best-selling author and lives in Britain with her partner and two children. My career aspirations are far less ambitious.
”French Relations” is set in France, just like my first novel, “Reversal Point”. “Vacation at Hillsend”, on the other hand, stays in my homeland, New Zealand. The cast of characters in “French Relations” and “Vacation at Hillsend” are quite different and the story lines equally so, needless to say.
“French Relations” has the cover blurb: “It’s a summer of lust, bed-hopping, unresolved sexual tension, horses, dogs, bolshy kids – and lots of bad behaviour. And, in the midst of the bedlam, at least two people fall in love...”
I’ve yet to come up with a blurb for “Vacation at Hillsend”.
Okay, so you may be thinking I’ve taken the easy way out for my next novel. The trouble is, 12 chapters of the manuscript, towards the start, have been lost irretrievably in electronic conversions. With no paper copy in existence, the huge gap is largely why, before now, I’ve been disheartened and put off re-constructing the missing part of the story so that I can bring the novel to publication in an updated form.
Anyhow, it does beat continuing to batter my skull to come up with a new plot all together.
Publication date? Maybe about March next year.
Writing again, I couldn’t be happier.
I’ve compromised by reviving a novel I drafted in 2001 but consigned to a floppy disc, and then a CD, until a moment like this came along.
Now, with seven published books under my belt, I feel more capable of revising it and, more or less, of achieving my original literary intention. I entitled the manuscript: “Vacation at Hillsend”.
The family holiday theme of the novel was inspired by Fiona Walker’s debut work, “French Relations” published in 1994 and written at age twenty-five. On Goodreads.com, it’s now her favourite work but I came across it as a Coronet paperback (ISBN-0-340-76587-9) and, being attracted by the cover, bought a copy just after it came out.
Today, Fiona Walker is deservedly a multi-million copy best-selling author and lives in Britain with her partner and two children. My career aspirations are far less ambitious.
”French Relations” is set in France, just like my first novel, “Reversal Point”. “Vacation at Hillsend”, on the other hand, stays in my homeland, New Zealand. The cast of characters in “French Relations” and “Vacation at Hillsend” are quite different and the story lines equally so, needless to say.
“French Relations” has the cover blurb: “It’s a summer of lust, bed-hopping, unresolved sexual tension, horses, dogs, bolshy kids – and lots of bad behaviour. And, in the midst of the bedlam, at least two people fall in love...”
I’ve yet to come up with a blurb for “Vacation at Hillsend”.
Okay, so you may be thinking I’ve taken the easy way out for my next novel. The trouble is, 12 chapters of the manuscript, towards the start, have been lost irretrievably in electronic conversions. With no paper copy in existence, the huge gap is largely why, before now, I’ve been disheartened and put off re-constructing the missing part of the story so that I can bring the novel to publication in an updated form.
Anyhow, it does beat continuing to batter my skull to come up with a new plot all together.
Publication date? Maybe about March next year.
Writing again, I couldn’t be happier.
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