Getting unstuck: author Oran Doyle on the writing of and the road to publication for his novel Give Me ’til Midnight.
I was stuck.
I’d been writing middle-grade children’s novels for eight years. Initially the writing had gone well. My first manuscript was well received by agents, but no one bit. My second flopped unmercifully. Not one single agent liked it. But at least I got it out there. I was sure the next one would be the hit.
Then I abandoned my third novel. I never got further than a first draft on realising that I just didn’t give a toss about the characters, the plot, any of it. And now I was mired in my fourth novel. Had been for years. Each draft made it a little better, but none of them got it there. That book was my own personal [insert your favourite endless war here] – I thought I’d never get out of it.
No Writing is Wasted
I’d frequently be told by those in the know that no writing is ever wasted. And while this was always irritating to hear, I knew there might be something to it. I’d learned a little about my writing process over those years. I’d learnt there was no sense planning out my novels in advance. I’m best off writing by the seat of my pants. And, contrary to public opinion, I’d learnt I like to rewrite as I go. I bounce back and forth through my manuscripts, changing the opening to match the characters as I get to know them, rewriting segments that no longer fit the direction my book is going in, and so on.
Still, getting nowhere is never fun. I’d once been very active on Twitter and built up friendships in the kind and welcoming Irish kidlit community. But now I’d started to pull away, self-conscious that I had nothing to show for all my years of writing.
Stuck, and Unstuck
Like I said, I was stuck.
Until, abruptly, I wasn’t.
One fateful evening around three years ago, I watched the Tom Cruise time loop flick Edge of Tomorrow with my kids. Action-packed and funny, it’s filled with fast-paced montages of Tom failing a task over multiple loops to comic effect until he finally gets it right.
I remember thinking that it would be a completely different film if there were no montages and we saw all those dead hours Tom spends waiting for the next loop to start. I remember thinking how boring and lonely it would be to be in a time loop. Later that evening, or maybe the next day, I had one last thought: what if someone saw a person in a loop and guessed they were in it?
I didn’t know why, but these ideas felt like enough. They felt like something I should write. Armed with them and with the nuggets of wisdom about my writing process I’d dredged up over the last few years, I said, feck it. I put my endless fourth manuscript aside and got writing something new.
Something New
Sick to my teeth of novels, I wrote it as a screenplay. This wasn’t just because I thought it would work as a film. It was because, compared to a novel, screenwriting is fast. All you write are the bare bones – the dialogue and brief visual descriptions. Plus the format wasn’t new to me. I’d worked as a script editor and reader and had a fair number of my short scripts funded.
So I got writing and, to my surprise, it flowed. Characters emerged fully formed. Events that I didn’t expect took place. It was a joy. I had a first draft completed in a month. And, joy of joys, I liked what I’d written, and the people who read it at that early stage liked it too.
Success!
All that it needed to be ready for querying was nearly a year and a half of writing, including five screenplay drafts, the revelation that it might work as a YA novel, one lengthy conversion from screenplay to novel process, then another three drafts as a novel, then endless line-editing, proofing, and polishing.
But I got it there.
Give Me ‘til Midnight
I’ve been lucky ever since. In May last year, an agent Kirsty McLachlan offered to represent me. In December, I signed a contract with Everything With Words. And Give Me ‘til Midnight is out this September. But while these are wonderful things, I can’t fully be proud of them as they were out of my control. I know too well that many a great writer never gets an agent. Many a great book never gets published.
What I am proud of is that I kept writing all through those wilderness years. That I stuck with it until I wrote something that I felt confident in. And even if the book hadn’t gotten anywhere, just getting to that point was worth celebrating.
Which was exactly what I did.
After I sent off my first batch of queries in March last year, I put aside a day in Dublin to do my favourite things. I visited the Hugh Lane art gallery, ate lunch in a Chinese restaurant with my brother, then went to the cinema to see a three hour film about a creative battling to achieve his artistic vision. (The Brutalist. Excellent.)
On that day in March, I celebrated my achievement: I’d gotten myself unstuck.
Just like Liam and Harmony do for each other in my novel.
(c) Oran Doyle
Author photographs (c) Siobhan Broughan
About Give Me ‘til Midnight by Oran Doyle:
Liam’s stuck in a time loop. Harmony’s just stuck.
Harmony’s a school drop-out stuck in a dead-end job. Liam is the self-declared ‘King of Dublin’ cheerfully stuck in a twenty-four-hour time loop. Fearful that she (and the rest of the universe) are unwittingly trapped in the loop too, Harmony convinces Liam to give her until the midnight reset to break the cycle. As her attempts fall flat and their personalities clash and time runs out, they find there’s more than one way to get unstuck.
“Wistful, moving, and clever.” Louise O’Neill, author of Asking For It
“An unforgettable read, I loved it.” Lucas Maxwell, author of A Million Tiny Missiles All at Once
Order your copy of Give Me ’til Midnight online here.
And read more Meet the Author articles on Writing.ie here.
