Dissolving into words

I don’t know how writing affects anybody else – but when I’m writing and it’s going well I vanish inside the piece I’m working on. It’s great, because the dialogue of my characters is more interesting than my own, and their situations are generally much more fascinating (and perilous) than mine. But it does mean that I have very little to say for myself when the writing is good.

So … I’ve sent off a sample – four chapters, a chapter by chapter outline, a very short synopsis of how the individual novel might become a series of four books and now it’s more or less out of my hands. I’ve done the best I can and what happens next depends on all kinds of things: whether the editor likes the work; whether it fits with her view of how the material should have been developed; how the market is looking; what her colleagues think of the idea – a lot of things that are little or nothing to do with how well I’ve written my requested material.

And yet, in my head, it’s all about me. It’s all about the words that I’ve put one next to another and whether they could have been better chosen, better placed. So I’m off to focus on my crochet as a bit of a break before heading back to completely revising the wolf novel, and if I vanish inside that one, you’ll know it’s going well.

3 Comments

  1. Sarah Hilary
    28th May 2010

    Congratulations on the submission, Kay! I know exactly what you mean by vanishing into the world you’re writing. Do you find it exhausting, and just a little disorientating when you find yourself back in the real world? I do, but that may be me. Good luck, in any case, with hearing back from the editor and with the wolf story or whatever comes next.

    Reply
  2. Vanessa Gebbie
    28th May 2010

    Good luck, Kay. Fingers firmly crossed, although I suspect I don’t need to.

    Reply
  3. Kay Sexton
    15th June 2010

    Thanks Sarah – yes I find it knackering moving between worlds and V, you keep those digits locked for me, I need all the luck I can get!

    Reply

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