I've got some news to share today. For the first time in six years, I am about to become a full-time writer again. This is something I've known about for a while, but I've saved this blog post until today so that I could explain properly.

In the very beginning it starts with this, a manuscript:

When I began writing, a manuscript was a bundle of paper which you posted in a Fedex box. Now, I deliver mine by email (though I usually take a paper copy to my agent, a kind of tradition we've established). The general rule for when to submit it is when you have entered a haze of exhaustion which renders you incapable of doing anything but adding and removing the same comma while feverishly muttering long sections of the book out loud to yourself to 'check the rhythm of the sentences'.

Delivering the book is difficult to do. You will have written, rewritten, polished and agonised over this book for probably well over a year - and that's if you are a quick writer. My books now take much longer. You will worry about whether or not it is as good as your other books, as good as it can be, whether your editor will be satisfied with it. But at some point you have to let it go. So you write a friendly email explaining that it's done, maybe give your editor a call to let her know to expect it imminently, and press send. This was what I did, on the 20th of June, with The Heart at War. Then, there is a moment when you don't quite realise the book is finished. Then, you feel a very tentative sense of relief and begin to realise that the labour that has consumed a large part of your energy for a large portion of your life is done. It's probably a good idea to celebrate in some way, despite your exhaustion, because this is an important moment. And also because your family and friends may not have seen you emerge from wherever you write for some time and might actually quite like to see you.

And then, you wait. I am at this stage at the moment, and it's a good moment. I'm keeping in touch with my editor, Amy, and generally just enjoying some time to catch up on everything else I've neglected. My editor will spend this time reading the book, making notes and recording her impressions of the draft. At some point in the next couple of weeks we'll arrange a schedule for the editing process. Once that begins, the manuscript is well on its way to becoming a book.

Anything else you would like to know? Just tell me and I'll try to include it here.

There were two things that surprised me about the publication process when I began writing.

First, it takes a long time to get a book from manuscript to publication. About 18 months in total is perfectly reasonable for a large, mainstream publisher.

Secondly, an author is a very small link in the large and complex network of people who are involved in the publishing process.  I have probably worked with 30 people, from cover designers to copy editors, on each volume of The Last Descendants. Multiply that by all my publishers around the world and that's around 540 people directly involved with the fate of a single book.

I don't think I am the only author whose first encounter with the publication process was a surprising one. For some reason, publishing is an industry surrounded in mystery. When I talk to people about my job they are shocked by how long it takes to get a book to publication, how many other people work on it, how far ahead my publishers think. There's still a tendency to see a book as something that springs into the world fully-formed, its birth shrouded in darkness (much as I think of a CD, or a film, or a piece of art). The finished nature of the product belies the very serious construction work that has gone into it, and the intricate scaffolding under its surface. A lot of that scaffolding comes from the writer, but they couldn't do it without the expertise of many others.

As The Heart at War has just begun the publication process, I thought it would be interesting to record its progress right up to the day of its publication. So I've decided to create a series of blogs on how a manuscript becomes a book. Over the next few months, I'll try to share each episode in the story. This is of course only a single perspective. My books are published by a mainstream publisher, Random House; many authors are published by small presses or get their work into the hands of their readers independently. I have an agent; some authors represent themselves. This book is my third and I was contracted to write it; the experience of submitting a debut novel is very different, as will be the process of submitting my own next book. I hope, either way, that there will be some useful insights for readers who are interested in looking behind the scenes at what it takes to create a book. It's a process I've been fascinated and often humbled by, involving as it does so many people who are just as expert at their craft as the most dedicated of writers, and many different processes without which the book couldn't exist.

I'll begin with #1 in this series, 'Delivering the manuscript'. If there's anything you want to see included over the next few months, just let me know.