This is the first line of the novel I just finished a first draft of. Nobody is more surprised than I am at the speed with which this book came spooling out. 48 days from first line to first draft, 90k words and 260 pages later. I averaged 2,000 words a day, and that was writing during the night, early mornings, late evenings, any time I could find around my full time job.
It's ten years since I wrote a novel. My first was published in 1999, the next three, all written during the first decade of this century, made it varying degrees up the publishing ladder courtesy of my agent, but none made the cut with any publisher, so by 2008, as the world economy collapsed, I felt my career as a novelist was probably in a downward spiral too. I loved all my books and had had untold amounts of fun and joy writing them, but three just felt like too many manuscripts to have languishing in the proverbial drawer, so I concentrated on my poetry instead and put out two more books of that in the following years.
This summer, on a wildly extravagent and gorgeous holiday in Italy, two characters formed in my head. I had them meet at the farmhouse hotel where I myself was staying in Orvieto, Umbria. That said, Cass my main female character is not me. Yes, she's a hospice nurse, because I know about that and really wanted to write about it. And yes, she's on holiday in Italy with her daughter and the daughter's boyfriend, as I was. But the parallels stop there.
Hugh, the main character, has been in my head for many years in various forms. I wrote about a Hugh in my first novel, and this Hugh is similar, but not the same in several key ways. This character developed strongly during my many hours lying by the pool in Orvieto or wandering the streets of Italian hilltowns. By the time I left Italy, I knew I had to write a novel about him. Four days after I got home, I decided that the only way to get the book writtten was to start writing. Brilliant, no?
Usually, I prepare for a novel by taking some serious notes. I write about the characters in various scenarios that may or many not make it into the book, just to get to know them better. What would they do in some fictitious situation? How would they react? How do they talk, think? What are their hopes, dreams, secrets that maybe I will not even divulge in the book?
This time, I just started writing from some notes I had put down in my diary of the vacation. And I couldn't stop. Seven weeks later, I had a manuscript. Now to find an agent! My previous agent relationship died of natural causes, so I'm on the search for a new one, with a couple of promising leads so far. Then, if I find an agent interested, and they think it could sell in the current market (always a mysterious thing) the long process of rewrites, rewrites, more rewrites, and hurrying up to wait.
I am so close to this book I have no vestige of objectivity about whether anyone else but me will enjoy it. However, even if nobody does, or if they like it but don't feel it will sell, the adrenaline rush of writing it, the small-hours frenzies of typing, the excitement of waiting all day to come home and write after work...I wouldn't have missed all that for anything. Maybe if this one goes nowhere, I have another in me! Guess I just have to take another Italian vacation to find out...
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