i want to sniff my book

Listen. I’m nearing the end of Project If (as yet, still untitled) and Project Unicorn Poop is shaping up okay – I’ve just figured out what was wrong with one of the characters (he lacked conflict, if you must know) and I can’t wait.

I just cannot wait.

I can’t wait for draft one to be over and done with. I can’t wait to plunge into the editing, the butchering, the going over everything with a fine tooth-comb, the polishing, the looking for an editor to do the job for me, the second edits, the line edits, ALL THE EDITS and then the front cover and then the publishing.

It isn’t that I want to be famous. It isn’t that I want to make pots and pots of money through this – though, I’m sure, I wouldn’t refuse if you really insisted.

It’s just that I want to sniff my book. I want to see it done, in the hands of the person it was written for. I want to hold it and stare at it and admire it and tell people I wrote a story that I wanted to read and I wish – oh I wish – you’ll read it too.

I want to have something that I’ve birthed. (Not literally birthed. I mean, maybe that will come in the future but not right now.) I want to see a beautiful book and pick it up and be surprised that oh this is something I wrote – something I wanted to read but couldn’t ever quite find.

It isn’t for pride, it isn’t for fame, it isn’t for anything except a single thing: I want to take joy in what my imagination has produced.

Right now it’s in my head and imperfectly on a page. Right now it’s rough – like a block of marble that hasn’t been shaped and chiselled. Right now, not even a proud mother could come up with a positive adjective to describe it.

And when it’s finished, it won’t be perfect. I’m no Heyer, no Sutcliff, no Sayers, no Wynne Jones, no Wodehouse.

But oh – if it’s a tiny bit beautiful, if it’s a little funny, if it’s moving, if it’s a wondrous adventure, if it makes you see a glimmer of something you can’t quite name, or startles you into a laugh; if it’s something that I can be pleased with then, I would like to share it with you.