Inside Ed's Head: The nicht’s are fair drawin’ in

Status Report 2022-10-17

Hey!

Another week’s gone past. The nicht’s are fair drawin’ in as my Gran would say. It’s ten past six and my watch is already showing tomorrow’s sunrise at 7:47, rather than today’s sunset, even though it’s slightly light.

And hey, at least we’ve got a functioning government. Not. Our PM didn’t turn up to answer an emergency question aimed at her, but instead sent a deputy. Then turned up looking a bit odd. And leaving. Something’s going on in Westminster.

Last week

Well, I managed to finish the outline to WHERE OUR BODIES LIE and I think I like it. There are obviously issues, but that’s a future problem. The prologue is 8 chapters and could be spread through as background or flashbacks, or I could write it all as a freebie novella for the mailing list. Which I probably will. It’ll give a nice taster for the novel and a nice refresher afterwards for readers. I’m juggling so many projects just now that I won’t get back to that for a few weeks, but it’ll be nice to look at it again with cold eyes. Going headfirst into something can lead to some story myopia, at least with me, so that’ll help me see opportunities for new red herrings, additional twists, etc. One thing I liked about THE TURNING OF OUR BONES was the length of time it took from outlining to writing, so that it let me write a more-interesting story when I came around to it, rather than blindly writing the first story. It wouldn’t be DI Rob Marshall, it would’ve been DS Kirsten Weir. The plot would’ve been a lot more basic and cheesy.

I got back the edits for Fenchurch 9, which I managed to turn around pretty quickly. The process for the last few novels where, instead of bashing on and writing the outline, I edited yesterday’s work before I wrote today’s meant all the big story work had been done and this was just nipping, tucking and learning to have a clue about certain opioids. #researchfail

This week

This is where this gets boring. I’m all about new ideas and new books, they’re exciting. When I’m editing old things, it’s less so. I’ve got to do a read-edit on Fenchurch 9, of which I managed to do a quarter today. Nothing big spotted, so hopefully a quick run through to hand it over to John for copy editing.

I’m enjoying reading it through, actually. That new tweak to my process has helped make this phase much quicker and less painful so, while it’s a bit more annoying to write, it’s giving me a much cleaner book at the part of the process where I’m usually flagging a bit. Having to make big surgical changes at this stage is usually a bloody nightmare!

Every book, I try to do something new with my process and optimise it that little bit more, so I get faster by being more efficient. That means I can take a lot more care with it without taking too much time – I get so many economies of scale by writing in small bursts, where I can keep all the details in my head and remember the whole story. So that’s this tweak and I think it’s a stayer. What I learnt from it was to take less time on the first pass to give the scene some structure and then spend more time fleshing it out on the second pass, which will be the big focus on the next writing project – WHERE OUR BONES LIE next month, probably.

Anyway, after finishing that on Friday, I’ll get a chance to look at the proof of FALSE START and arrange to get that out there. I’m thinking a paperback or hardback edition too. And I’ve got the re-outline edits for the sci-fi nonsense back, which will make me want to smash my head off a brick or stone wall.

Anyway. Have a good week, y’hear?

Cheers,
Ed