I’ve been in a long, dark tunnel for weeks now, working very hard to finish the first draft of The Spice Merchant’s Wife. There is a little light at the end of the tunnel as I’m approaching the Big Climax scene and will then only need to write the Resolution.
Once finished, there will still be a lot of work still to do. I’ll have to put on my Editor’s hat and slice out 30,000 of the words I crafted so lovingly. Each time I write a new novel I tell myself I must be more succinct but it never seems to happen! I will have to lose whole subplots and several characters to achieve a commercial length of 100,000 to 105,000 words.
I took a little time out this week to meet up with Slough Writers, a group close to my heart as they were there to support me when I very first started to write. I was very pleased when I was invited to meet them to talk about my novels.
I gave an account of what made me interested in writing historical fiction and how I did my research for this. Afterwards there was a lively question and answer time about how I met the deadlines (blood, sweat and tears!) and what it is actually like to be published.
It was lovely to meet up with old friends and recharged my batteries to power on to the end of The Spice Merchant’s Bride.