A BOOK IS NEVER FINISHED

My recently completed Regency historical is quietly being touted around. Every now and again my critique group points out a discrepancy in the text or disagrees with an attitude or expression, so I just keep honing. We writers are never satisfied. Nothing is EVER finished. Even the best writers – especially the best writers - seem to want to keep honing, even after publication. Maybe perfectionism comes with the territory.

I’ve also just completed a romantic suspense which is a psychological thriller rather than a rabid action thriller. I wrote it very quickly – in about nine weeks I guess. So now comes the honing and polishing and editing and washing and revising and reviewing and…you get the picture. Never happy. But there are several threads in it and each one must be satisfactorily tied up. And there are technical references to be checked. And that is only the beginning of all the revisions needed.

The book is set in New Zealand, one of the few countries where the ordinary police force doesn’t carry guns. I have to admit, this novel is more about senior detectives who do carry Glocks, but that’s just as well since there’s a serial killer loose. You can’t beat that dense, damp New Zealand bush (forest) where murderers and victims crash around in the undergrowth.

I found that writing suspense was very liberating compared with romantic historical writing. For a start, the obvious external goal of the hero and heroine (and everyone else) is to stay alive. So that easily takes care of one external goal. If you don’t know what I mean about external goals, read one of those endless supply of “How to Self-Edit…” books. The hero, heroine and villain(s) are all required to have both external and internal goals. When I first started writing about a hundred years ago, I thought all you did was sit down and write a great story that you had been bursting to tell. Actually, come to think of it, way back then, that was what people did (except for those who were obsessed with outlines and plans and other fancy stuff).

Nowadays – no. Between black moments and motivation and conflict, the parameters for writing have become as sophisticated as a fur-lined lavatory seat – and some of them are about as useful. But those are the rules. If we don’t obey them, we don’t satisfy our agents and our editors. I don’t know about the readers because I’ve never had a reader tell me my book was trash because the heroine only had a brown moment not a black one. So I can’t answer for them.

Of course, you must understand that the rules change rapidly. That is why I prefer not to clutter my website with writing hints that I am no way qualified to give to other writers. There are loads of sites that do that very well. But they are owned by REAL writers. Me, I’m just a rank beginner. I expect my apprenticeship to take about oh…another five years, maybe. Heh! I should be so lucky.

In the meantime I write and hone, polish, edit, rewrite and submit. Never satisfied. At least I have something in common with those famous writers!