I recently finished writing my second novel, something I hadn’t even remotely expected to do this year, but about a month ago an idea came to me and it literally flew onto the page. I’m so proud of it. I remember thinking not long ago and jotting the thought down in my notebook, “The task now is not merely to create something, but to create something truly beautiful”. I think all writers are constantly yearning to write their masterpiece and I believed that the idea taking shape in my mind was just that.
It’s wonderful to finally see it, young and beautiful, printed onto sheets of clean paper. As I wrote each chapter I printed it out and you should see the state of that manuscript – covered in Pepsi, tea, cat biscuits. It feels like a person to me, only one month old but withered, wrinkled, daubed with pen marks and annotations. When you print out the first edited draft, all clean, warm to the touch, it’s a beautiful thing. I ran through the house with it clutched to my chest and presented it to my mother for her to read for the first time. It was like opening my hands to let a baby bird fly free.
Finishing a book is the best feeling in the world, but it’s also very hard to let it go, to realise that this thing that you’ve devoted almost every waking thought to for so long is finally finished. Your characters are ready to make themselves known to the world, to walk out between the words and into the mind of another person. These people, your characters, who existed only in your mind for so long, are finally walking the pathways of the world, laying the seeds of new ideas with their words.
It’s impossible not to feel just a little bit abandoned, a little bit like a vessel for thoughts far greater than you, the tools these characters used to make themselves real. Still, when you take a step back you realise that these characters will always be yours, they’ll always visit you at Christmas, even if the readers do what they do and take ownership of them.
All the same, when they are off on their adventures, another person comes knocking at the door of your imagination, asking to be put down on paper. You sit waiting, tapping your fingers on the table, a cup of cold tea by your elbow, just ready to be pushed off and smash as the doorbell rings. This person could be anyone. They could be a knight or an alien or a middle-aged drunkard with a problem you can solve. There’s always a notebook in your pocket, a pen being nervously chewed. When you walk down the street the world throws ideas at you, trying to cheer you up.
There’s no denying that finishing a book is difficult, but when you’re a writer ideas never fall far from the tree. They jump up at you in the dark, they come knocking when you least expect, and even if it isn’t the best time, even if you’re in the shower, you invite them in for tea, and they ransack your house rather like the dwarves did to poor Bilbo Baggins.
I was rather sad when I walked into my mum’s office and told her that my book was finished. I walked over to the window and looked out, trying to ignore the great skeleton of a spider wedged in behind the hinge, breathing in the air, wondering if I would ever again find a story quite like the one I had just written.
I didn’t choose the writer’s life. The writer’s life hid under my bed and whispered secrets through my pillow, it lounged just beneath the surface of my thoughts, it tied me up in words and made me fall in love with it.
When it comes knocking, I can’t help but answer the door.
