Drafted

So I've just finished the first draft of the new novel, emitting a spurt of around 3500 words in a rattling crescendo this morning. I don't, as I've noted elsewhere, tend to follow a detailed outline with absolute fidelity, planning out every beat and then making sure that they are all ticked off in the right place. Instead, I have a rough shape, and a few notable features I know I need to visit, and a place where I think I'm going to end up, but everything between is a process of discovery. In other words, I do more of my thinking about writing while I'm writing than before I start.

As I try to keep rewriting to a minimum as I go along, preferring to keep a steady pace, to keep moving forward, the first draft is usually fairly messy, with contradictions and abrupt introductions of important points (although not, oddly, of important characters - they are the one thing I do think about before I begin). It doesn't matter. Everything can be fixed in the rewrites (and I have already accumulated a fair number of notes for the second draft). And sometimes it is important to fail. To find the way that leads forward by trying other ways first.

Anyway, I'm just back from signing copies of Evening's Empires in Forbidden Planet's London branch. I have to deal with the copy-edit of the reissue of the Confluence trilogy before I head out to Spain for the Celsius232 Festival. And then I'll begin again with the new novel, at the beginning.

The title of this one, by the way, is Something Coming Through. It's about aliens, and second chances.