That new book feeling. Not cracking open a novel you’ve read before, but starting to write. The feeling that the words can’t tumble on to the page quickly enough.
But let me backtrack for a moment. A couple of months ago my publisher accepted my new book. It was one of those gifts that just wrote itself, where every scene fell into place, where every single character was gloriously alive.
Since then I’ve been writing; it’s what writers do, of course. I’ve picked up things I’d worked on before and pushed and prodded them along. I’ve tried something new. But after you’ve created something special, something so right, anything less feels like failure. We always have the need to be better than we were before, and yet make it seem effortless.
I’d given up the work in progress, never mind that I was 45k in. It was good, it had a few excellent scenes. But it just wasn’t good enough to satisfy me. The only thing I was doing in carrying on was fooling myself.
At the end of last week I came on a reference to the Hanging Psalm, the one spoken to convicts at the foot of the gallows. And that sent sparks fizzing round my brain. A story began to take shape. Not just the tale itself, but the main character. The next day I started to write.
600 words the first session, and I knew. I just knew. This hit it like a punch in the gut. It fired on all cylinders. I had a powerful opening, but already the character was leaping off the page (That opening is now on my blog. You can read it here, if you wish).
The words are still coming, and they still feel right. That’s no guarantee it will last, I know that. But for now I’ll take it. It has its own shape, its own hard edges. Like all I write, it’s historical crime, and like most of my stories, it’s set in Leeds. But it has its own sensibility to set it apart from other eras, its own take on the shifting growth of the town. It’s alive.
My partner asked a perceptive question after she’d read the first few pages.
‘How many of the books you’ve decided to work at have you actually finished?’
I thought for a moment.
‘None.’
And that’s how it goes if we’re honest critics of our own work. But when the wave comes, we’d better be prepared to ride it. Maybe it won’t go all the way to shore. But then again, maybe it will.