Sunday 10th June 2018
Changing course
I missed a couple of Sunday posts because I was busy doing other things. Mainly going to festivals and other gigs and having to write them up for Music in Leicester magazine.
Since early January, I have been working on my third novel – The Streets of London. Now, I have decided to give myself a break from that. I have gone back to my first novel – Holiday – and am working on that. I feel it should be put out to potential agents and publishers. But first. I need to revise it. There is no such thing as a ‘finished’ novel. Not until it had been published.
Holiday is a story about a group of English teenagers who go on a packaged holiday to Italy. Set in the year 1966, the story centres around two friends who take advantage of the emergence of cheap packaged tours and end up on the Adriatic Riviera with a bunch of other teenagers and their parents. The work contains a variety of themes, including the clash of cultures, the nature of adolescent friendships, sexual awakening and reflections on history and modernism.
I felt I needed a break from working on my third novel. Having got a long way into it, it seemed it was time to sit back and reflect on what I have been doing and where I am going with the book. Having worked on three novels, I find I have not done very much about trying to get them published. A few manuscripts have been sent to literary agents but that has not resulted in anything. That is mainly because the structure of the books fails to fit with the accepted way of doing things. Reorganising the flow of the story has been my main preoccupation and continues to be my main concern as I go back to the manuscript after a break of two years.
I spent the whole of yesterday reading through the manuscript of ‘Holiday’ the working title I have given to my first work of fiction. I spent many happy hours reading it but now I have to be objective and critical about it. A lot of it appears to be very self-indulgent. Few people have read the complete manuscript. Friends have read bits of it but I have not yet asked other authors to look at it and give me their comments. That is something I need to do. But not after I have gone through the whole thing with a fine-tooth comb.
Previous posts on my blog
20th May 2018. – How I am writing my third novel.
13th May 2018. – Drawing as an aid to writing
6th May 2018. – Masks and characters.