What am I doing right now? Apart from being interrupted frequently with that pesky old 'real life' thing – the need to earn a crust, for example – I am mostly concentrating on Breathing Fire. Whilst Oneiromancer is out on submission (to all of two places) I am working on its second sequel. And, as I have frequently complained in these very pages, it has been a long and difficult road.
From being worried about my well of inspiration to it becoming the longest first-drafting process I've (yet) experienced, Breathing Fire has been a struggle. And yet I don't feel any resentment towards it. It's not my problem child – that was the novel that eventually became Human Resources. The writing, when I've been able to get down to it, has been steady.
Of course it may be that hindsight shows me for a fool. But, at present, I am oddly well-disposed to the beast. No matter that I've had to fight for time, that I've yet to find my flow, I feel good about the project. It will be done; no matter how long it takes or where it takes me, I believe in it.
And that's a little odd, because I have no real basis for my belief. When I wrote Oneiromancer I had the real sense that I was making words good: that I had 'levelled up' and was creating something that I couldn't have done before. I don't have this feeling now. What I do feel is that I've got a little more weight of experience both as a writer and a reader, a little more self-awareness and – yes – maybe I have got a little more skilled at setting down the words.
But this is a first draft, and the real skill is in the editing. When I finally get this stage complete and I turn to look at myself in the mirror, that's when 'quality of writing' can be measured. All I have at the moment is the vaguest of feelings, almost an itch, that gives the sense that this is worth doing.
That and the plot I have in mind, which still interests me even as I spin it from the air. If book one was about creating the world, and book two (Our Kind of Bastard) was about almost malevolent glee in misdirection, book three is about… what? About cruelty and indifference, I guess. It's leaner, hungrier and more desperate than its predecessors, I think.
I'm talking in vague terms, I know; descriptions that are almost worthless on their own. Feelings rather than fragments. I could talk at length about what happens in the story; or maybe I should just shut up and finish the damn thing, only open up about it then.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm still here, still writing. And maybe – just maybe – it's actually worth the effort.
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