There’s one common emotion that a lot of writers experience when they’ve finished a manuscript – anticlimax.
Never quite the streamer and champagne affair that they anticipated, they then immediately begin to consider how it’s going to be received and, if it is met with a positive response, how many more drafts are going to be needed.
I do try to celebrate the moment. After all, it’s the place you fantasised about being at months previously. It’s also the hardest part of the work done…isn’t it?
I’ve just finished the second draft of my new, stand alone thriller and it necessitated a lot of new work. Some the agent requested, a lot of it self-imposed. The deed is done so a triple gin martini will be forthcoming. But as I’m spiking the olives, I’m already thinking about the final polish that I’ll give it before emailing it.
But every draft is an improvement and if I can get everyone as fired up about this one as I did STOP ME then I’m looking forward to an opportunity to enhance it. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who have read my first novel – via MY WEBSITE and Twitter - and I’m starting to get a feel for what pops their corn. Now I’m asking: Are there enough twists and turns as my previous novel? Is it as contemporary? Is it as dark? Does it move fast enough? My agent and publisher will have myriad responses to these questions over the next few months I’m sure.
And after it’s been edited, polished and proofread and if/when it’s published there’ll be a lot of readers with a different take on whether I have actually ticked all the right boxes. But at some point in all this there’s got to be a celebration. So why the hell not now? Cheers!
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Well done on finishing the book. But I know what you mean about it feeling like an anti-climax when its completed. It always is. I think it's partly because you spend so long on the thing, and you get so bound up in the characters and the story you feel at a bit of a loose end when its over. But it's also because the book is never as good as it was going to be when you started - and that's probably true of Tolstoy as well as more modest writers such as ourselves - so there is a sense of disappointment in there as well.
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