Every Second Counts

Monday 29th April 2024, 4094 words added to WIP, 1 new rejection, 0 new agent queries, 3 competition entries, listening to Margaret Atwood’s On Writers and Writing, reading The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker for book club, Where the World Turns Wild by Nicola Penfold for children’s book club and reviewing The House at the End of the Sea for Victoria M Adams (a debut middle grade novel by a friend and fellow Birkbeck MA graduate), 0 new book purchases, 2 coffees, 1 lemon and ginger tea, and an almond croissant

Over the last two weeks I have returned to a novel I started in 2014. My love of the film and story, The Adjustment Bureau (The Adjustment Team by Philip K Dick) as well as the idea of destiny, inspired me to write this novel. The theme ‘live life to the fullest’ epitomises what the main character needs to learn during her journey. This speculative romance novel mixes the idea of fate and romance with a few personal experiences and crossed the finish line at 85,000 words.

But it wasn’t ‘finished’. In the last decade, I have lost count of the number of times I have made significant redrafts including changes to tense, point of view and adding/deleting entire sub-plots. It is the only novel for which I have received a full manuscript request from an agent (Chloe Seager – thank you). Despite liking the manuscript, she wanted fundamental changes (unspecified) and I wish I could ask for her current view on the evolving story, but I will never know as she now only represents children’s literature. Bad timing.

In 2019 I removed a whole subplot but left remnants of that storyline in the manuscript which I hoped worked alone. However by the summer of 2023, I realised they didn’t and removed the last vestiges of the science-fiction element of the novel, leaving the manuscript 15,000 words shorter. Since last summer, my intention has been to repair the damage caused by those blunt cuts but it has taken me nearly a year to find my way back.

For the last three weeks, each evening I have reworked a handful of pages after work and am currently at the halfway point, with an additional 6,500 new words already woven in. Rereading a story I have felt so passionately about for so long has been pleasurable, like catching up with an old friend. It’s not fresh to me but it has a new working title, it’s sixth, and to give you an idea of the time and effort applied to this story already, here is a list of each working title and the number of drafts I have saved on my laptop. The time and effort invested in this novel perhaps explains why I haven’t lost hope and abandoned it to my bottom drawer.

The Institute – 14

Reversion – 9

Coming Back – 6

The Distance Between Us – 4

Beyond the Clouds – 4

Every Second Counts – 1

• This week a fellow author, JM Cobley, shared an article on Facebook summarising The Trial (2022) which shares the research relayed in the court case in November 2022 when a judge declared Penguin Random House could not purchase Simon & Schuster as it would reduce competition in the publishing market. The article reveals some fascinating insights into traditional publishing.
• Adam Croft, one of, if not, the most successful self-published writer in the UK, has turned down traditional publishing deals and is responsible for his own success. The pull of traditional publishing remains strong but the statistics suggest it might not be the most lucrative option for an ‘average’ selling author. Money might be a dirty word in the creative industries but someone has to buy the baked beans.

Key statistics shared by the No One Buys Books article (quoting The Trial) might shock most booklovers:

The research suggested out of approximately 58,000 titles published in that year:

96% of the titles sold fewer than 1000 copies

50% of the titles sold fewer than 12 copies

In 2020 only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies

So regardless of how I reach the market, you have to wonder, as the blog states, who will be buying my book?

As a writer, you hear about the need for a unique selling point, an online following…how you need a ‘brand’. Yet which genre I write in or which form I choose does not come from some marketing plan. Toby Litt recently described this better than I can in his writer’s diary – I don’t get to choose what I write next. I prod at ideas, I poke around my mind and gradually I am drawn to one project more than another. This explains why it has taken me since last summer to start my current edit of my oldest WIP. The planning process is different every time but I do recognise when it is time to start ‘writing’ or in this case re-writing. Let’s hope I will know when it is the right time to start publishing too.

Kate

P.S. Huge congratulations to fellow Birkbeck graduate Victoria M Adams whose debut MG novel The House at the End of the Sea publishes on the 2nd May. I’m on page 61 and hooked!

P.P.S And huge congratulations to fellow AWG member (and organiser) Melissa Elborn who has been long-listed for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize with The Other House. A phenomenal achievement.