I've written a book!
Hi everyone!
It’s been a while so I thought I’d check in with you all…
So, the news is that yesterday I finished my new novel! Currently it has a title, but for now I’m keeping that to myself. I only hit on it last week, after weeks and months of it being called ‘My new book’, and though for now it feels perfect I want to wait until I’m certain before sharing. So for now it’s ‘My new book’.
There’s a lot of work to do, some of which I know about (copy-edits, etc.) and some I don’t (my editors will have input, of course, but whether this will be ‘I’m not sure you’ve spelt “manoeuvrable” correctly on page 67’ or, ‘please re-write the entire second half of the novel, what were you even thinking?’ remains to be seen. Hopefully somewhere between the two.) But it’s done, I’ve typed THE END (metaphorically anyway), it doesn’t rattle (too much), and I’m pleased enough with it to share with people I’m not related to.
This has been a different book for me, in many ways, but two in particular stand out. The first is that I have kept it totally to myself. Until a couple of weeks ago, when I nervously shared it with my first readers (AKA my mum and dad), literally no one knew anything about it. I kept everyone — my agent, editors, even my friends and colleagues in the writing world — completely in the dark about what the book would contain. Even when, during a meeting to discuss the publication of FINAL CUT, my publisher begged me to tell him what it was about, all I would say was, ‘It’s a psychological thriller.’
I’ve found this to be incredibly liberating in ways I perhaps hadn’t expected. I’ve felt much freer writing this book, and had much more fun with it, I think because it’s been mine and mine alone for so long. It’s felt easier to get inside the world I’ve created and the material itself has felt more malleable. It’s almost like telling people about the writing locks it down somehow and makes it harder to work with.
The second way in which this book has been different from my others is that I wrote the first draft by long hand.
This also surprised me in the effect it had. There was definitely something different about writing by hand; on the one hand it felt almost as if there was a stronger link between my brain and the page, but on the other something deeper was going on. Knowing I would have to type up what I was writing sort of liberated me in some way to make more mistakes, or rather to not worry about the mistakes I was making. I would write something and think, ‘Well, that paragraph’s a mess, but I can fix it when I type it in’, rather than, ‘That paragraph’s a mess, so I’ll fix it before I carry on’ as I would on the computer. It helped me to be clearer, mentally, subconsciously even, about whether I was in ‘writing’ mode or ‘editing’ mode.
It occurs to me now that both these things, the keeping it to myself and the handwriting, probably helped in similar ways. They meant the work felt looser, less fixed, and that feeling went on for longer (even though this was a book I planned in quite a lot of detail before I even started writing it). I think in turn that made it feel more fun, and therefore I produced better work. I certainly think it’s my best book yet (though it remains to be seen whether I’ve spelt ‘manoeuvrable’ wrong on page 67…)
In other news …
Final Cut out soon!
The paperback of FINAL CUT is out soon in the UK (Feb 4th, to be precise), with a brand new jacket. There’s the possibility of a few online events around publication, but none confirmed quite yet. We’ll see what happens.
Twitter Book Club
And you may want to know about my Twitter book club — #SJsTwitterBookClub. We all get together (on Twitter of course) to talk about a particular book, joined by the author in question. So far we’ve had people like David Nicholls talking about ‘Us’, Paula Hawkins (‘The Girl on the Train’), Brian Bilson (‘Diary of a Somebody’), and over the next few weeks we’ll be talking about ‘Black and Blue’ with Ian Rankin, ‘Sleepyhead’ with Mark Billingham and ‘This is Going to Hurt’ with Adam Kay, plus more to come. The details are here, but really it’s very simple…
1. Just log on to Twitter at the allotted time and follow me (@sj_watson) and the relevant authors/guests to watch the tweets in real time.
2. Dont be shy! This is nothing without you. Ask questions, share memories and join in the discussion using #SJsTwitterBookClub.
3. Try to keep the conversation respectful, and talk about the book in hand. That's it!
I do hope you’ll join in some of them, they’re great fun. And if you have any books/authors you’d like to chat about/to, then let me know. I can only ask (unless they’re dead, in which case I can’t ask. But even then, there might be someone who would appear as a guest — a superfan maybe, or someone else who’s an expert, so it’s worth a shot). Reply to this email or drop me a message on Twitter with your ideas and I’ll see what I can do.
That’s it. I do hope you’re well and that you’re managing to find some peace, and maybe even some joy, in all the madness. We must hope that better times are around the corner.
Take care