Working Title

In January I mentioned that I'd achieved my dream of writing a full length novel. I followed some great advice at that point, and I put that novel away in a metaphorical drawer and forgot about it. This is supposed to help you come back to a work with fresh eyes and quickly find all the things still wrong with it.

During this period of leaving it in a drawer I distracted myself by commencing work on my second novel. The more I wrote of it, the more I preferred it over my first one. The characters were stronger, the tension was more tangible, the gags were funnier.

For eight months I ignored my first work to focus on the new story. Every time I completed a writing session of frantic scribbling I walked away with increasing confidence that this story was an improvement of the first.

Last week I reached the end. The first draft - all handwritten - was complete. Since then I've changed gears, moving into second draft, type and edit mode. Untangling all my messy jottings and trying to arrange them in the right order in Scrivener.

It's been sobering. Now I'm in a place of self-doubt. I can't tell if the second book I wrote is actually any better, or if I just liked the novelty.