under the whip

I'm under the whip these days, fast approaching the deadline for my latest novel. Things are becoming a little tense here. You always think it's going to work out okay, that even if you miss your word quota some days, you can catch up later when you're flying. But I haven't been flying for some days now, and I only have two weeks left. This weekend, then. That's when I'm going to get to grips with these last few chapters and really blow the dust off the keys. I tend to work better at weekends than during the week, for various reasons, even though I'm now a full-time writer. Perhaps I'm more relaxed at weekends and the words come easier to my mind.

One of the problems with the last stages of a novel is that you never want to finish it. Your practical brain wants to finish it, of course, and move on to your next novel, to the next fascinating character who's been creeping into your head for the past few months, trying to distract you from the task in hand. But there's also a part of you that fears completion, that doesn't want to type THE END and package it all off. Too late then for any changes of heart, for any last minute adjustments to the story or the text itself. It's finished and it has to stand alone from now on. At least until the copy-editor spots a glaring error - like the sexy brunette in chapter 3 who is suddenly a blonde in chapter 7!

So the last stage of a novel can be pretty fraught, not just because you have to prise your fingers off the baby you've nursed from page one to the end, but also because a writer needs to comb through the text as closely as possible to spot typos and grammatical mistakes and continuity errors. Luckily, thanks to a father who was a copy-editor, I rarely make spelling mistakes. But that doesn't make me immune to some of the other embarrassing errors that need to be corrected before a novel arrives on the editor's desk, spanking clean and ready to read.

When you begin a novel, you have an end in sight. And it's a tangible end, something you can point to, talk about, quantify in real terms. Most writers know from page one, deep down in their gut, what this novel is going to be like, who the characters are, how the book will feel for the reader. But of course that's what you're aiming at. It's not necessarily what you achieve. By the time you reach the last few chapters, you begin to have a fairly shrewd idea whether or not you have realised your initial vision for the book.

With my own last page on the horizon, I'll keep you posted on that ...