Sunday 17 March 2013

John Barleycorn Must Die

I hate editing. It's brutally difficult, painfully dull and utterly soul-destroying.
I recently decided to go back to the first novel I wrote, The Great Absolute. I knew it needed a lot of work before it was ready to be set loose on the world but it was only when I started re-reading the weighty manuscript that I realised quite what I had let myself in for.
Don't get me wrong, I'm hugely proud of this book and I am really looking forward to getting it out there on Kindle. The problem is, the current draft of the novel is a bit of a mess. It has been over four years since I last tinkered with it and it's fascinating to see how the book suffers terribly from "First Novel Syndrome". It's funny when it should be serious. Slow where it should move fast. Worst of all, it's hugely over-written and spends far too much time telling the reader what is going on rather than just showing them. Needless to say, I've got my work cut out for me over the next few weeks as I whip this unruly beast into shape.
English folk customs play a huge role in the novel and for that reason I think it would be great to launch the book on Mayday. It remains to be seen whether I'll actually manage to hit this frankly ludicrous self-imposed deadline. Given that Strange Cases: The Adventures of Edmund Forrester arrived fifteen months later than I had hoped, I wouldn't hold your breath. In the meantime, here's a teaser poster I put together this weekend.