Spring is a good time for making plans, and while on the surface the North-East of England is still firmly locked in winter, I have been thinking ahead. After some consideration, I've decided to aim to finish my draft of The Heart at War by the middle of April. This still gives me about a month to make the final changes and revisions, read and reread the draft, and check that I'm happy with the quality of the writing. I'm going to do my best over the next few weeks to make sure I keep to my own deadline! For many writers, I think, there's a risk of getting lost in the process of editing and re-editing your work, so sometimes finishing a book becomes a case of having the courage to let go...
Meanwhile, I've been thinking about what comes after the Last Descendants trilogy. I've been making a living from writing since I was sixteen. Really, that's a very young age, and I've always had a firm rule for myself: I will only write as long as I have something to say. I felt that the stories that made up The Last Descendants needed to be told, to find their way onto the page somehow, and my pursuit of the craft of writing has been in their service. I have had a few ideas for other projects over the years, but none that have really stuck. There's probably a simple reason for this. Each work that is written recreates the fabric of reality slightly differently, and I have been too immersed in the particular world of the North family and their struggles to allow any other idea to develop.
Recently, I've come to appreciate how much my obsession with becoming a better writer, striving for the next right sentence with which to tell these stories, has shaped the choices I've made in the last ten years. Really, it was what found me reading and rereading Thomas Hardy and George Eliot at thirteen years old when I first had an idea that wouldn't go away, with a vague, hopeful sense that these were the people who held the secrets of the novelist's craft. It was what drove me at fourteen to spend months studying every book on the craft of writing not just in my local library but in my entire county. It was what led me, unexpectedly, to finish The Eyes of a King at sixteen, caught up in the wish to bring the whole story to life. It's the reason I've read some of Raymond Carver's short stories ten or fifteen times, The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird five each, and Middlemarch about eleven! Really, it's the reason I went to university - in order to get the space to study other writers' work solidly for three years. I'm not an ambitious person (as any of my friends or family will tell you!), but trying to tell these stories well has given me an ambition of sorts, a burning wish to do them justice.
Meanwhile, writing has been kind to me... It has given me opportunities that have changed my life, and brought me into the path of many inspiring, talented and ultimately very kind people - agents, editors and other friends made through the craft. It has allowed me to do the things that have made for a more interesting life: study, travel abroad, live in different places and take different part-time jobs. I'm lucky to have been able to write continuously, sometimes full-time and sometimes part-time, since the start of my adult life, making a career out of something I've always loved. Over the past few years, as I've fought to balance writing with the other elements of my life, I've come to appreciate just how important the craft has been to the way I make sense of the world. I am passionate about writing because of the satisfaction that comes from putting life into words in a way that maybe, with luck, hasn't been done before - and so perhaps capturing its beauty, its strangeness, its power. But throughout the last seven years, I've kept my belief that I can only be a writer as long as I have something to say. So I have always been clear with myself - if I didn't feel immediately compelled to write something after The Heart at War, I wouldn't push it. I would keep up my practise of the craft, do something else and wait and see what transpired...
And then, a couple of weeks ago, a few sentences came to me. Nothing pre-empted this: it was a cold, raw dusk and I was walking down the alley beside our house to get to the supermarket, preoccupied with the chores I had to get done that evening. The words came out of nowhere. I haven't even noted them down yet, as I want to give them a chance to develop. But I hope this is a sign that, after I finish The Heart at War, there may be other stories out there, waiting to be told...
Meanwhile, I've been thinking about what comes after the Last Descendants trilogy. I've been making a living from writing since I was sixteen. Really, that's a very young age, and I've always had a firm rule for myself: I will only write as long as I have something to say. I felt that the stories that made up The Last Descendants needed to be told, to find their way onto the page somehow, and my pursuit of the craft of writing has been in their service. I have had a few ideas for other projects over the years, but none that have really stuck. There's probably a simple reason for this. Each work that is written recreates the fabric of reality slightly differently, and I have been too immersed in the particular world of the North family and their struggles to allow any other idea to develop.
Recently, I've come to appreciate how much my obsession with becoming a better writer, striving for the next right sentence with which to tell these stories, has shaped the choices I've made in the last ten years. Really, it was what found me reading and rereading Thomas Hardy and George Eliot at thirteen years old when I first had an idea that wouldn't go away, with a vague, hopeful sense that these were the people who held the secrets of the novelist's craft. It was what drove me at fourteen to spend months studying every book on the craft of writing not just in my local library but in my entire county. It was what led me, unexpectedly, to finish The Eyes of a King at sixteen, caught up in the wish to bring the whole story to life. It's the reason I've read some of Raymond Carver's short stories ten or fifteen times, The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird five each, and Middlemarch about eleven! Really, it's the reason I went to university - in order to get the space to study other writers' work solidly for three years. I'm not an ambitious person (as any of my friends or family will tell you!), but trying to tell these stories well has given me an ambition of sorts, a burning wish to do them justice.
Meanwhile, writing has been kind to me... It has given me opportunities that have changed my life, and brought me into the path of many inspiring, talented and ultimately very kind people - agents, editors and other friends made through the craft. It has allowed me to do the things that have made for a more interesting life: study, travel abroad, live in different places and take different part-time jobs. I'm lucky to have been able to write continuously, sometimes full-time and sometimes part-time, since the start of my adult life, making a career out of something I've always loved. Over the past few years, as I've fought to balance writing with the other elements of my life, I've come to appreciate just how important the craft has been to the way I make sense of the world. I am passionate about writing because of the satisfaction that comes from putting life into words in a way that maybe, with luck, hasn't been done before - and so perhaps capturing its beauty, its strangeness, its power. But throughout the last seven years, I've kept my belief that I can only be a writer as long as I have something to say. So I have always been clear with myself - if I didn't feel immediately compelled to write something after The Heart at War, I wouldn't push it. I would keep up my practise of the craft, do something else and wait and see what transpired...
And then, a couple of weeks ago, a few sentences came to me. Nothing pre-empted this: it was a cold, raw dusk and I was walking down the alley beside our house to get to the supermarket, preoccupied with the chores I had to get done that evening. The words came out of nowhere. I haven't even noted them down yet, as I want to give them a chance to develop. But I hope this is a sign that, after I finish The Heart at War, there may be other stories out there, waiting to be told...
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