Ordinarily I celebrate writing the words The End on a manuscript and bundling it off to my editors for the ritual shredding. After months of work, to finally get a draft completed is a relief and comes with a sense of pride at the achievement. Yet, this time there is also a sense of unease, bordering on sadness.
This last year has been particularly tough from a writing point of view. Having paddled in the historical romance arena for a few years, I had planned to write a contemporary series – of three lesbian couples who all live together in a large house, which they rename Yew Hall. I think I was more inspired by the joke than the detail, for although I had planned all three novels and the detail of the characters, when I started to write, the character who was supposed to be funny and light kept appearing as angry and frankly, unlikeable.
Maybe it was because I was struggling with the fatigue of long covid, or because of the cataclysm of world events, but it was hard to put my fingers to the keyboard and produce anything at all, and even worse, on the page the words were rambling and banal.
In March I attended a Global Wordsmiths writing retreat and explained my problems, how I’d lost my mojo and joy in writing. It had taken me six months to drag out 30,000 words and I couldn’t say I was happy with any of them.
“Why don’t you write what you want to write?” my editor asked, giving me permission to set aside the contemporary romance. I’d had an idea of writing another historical romance around Auntie Florrie, a secondary character in Encrypted Hearts. In there it was intimated she had worked in the publishing world in London in the 1920s. It would make a great short story – perhaps 5,000 words. Immediately I got down to it and within a week I’d smashed through the 5,000 and had twenty thousand words settled down. Okay, it can be a novella, I thought. At the end of the first draft it’s now sitting around 75,000 so it’s definitely a novel, called On The Edge of Uncertainty. I’m sure my editor will shave off some of my filler words and redundant dialogue tags, but it will be of that region.
The 1920s must have been such an exciting time to be writing, as people pushed back the strictures of the Edwardian and Victorian eras and writers and artists challenged the straight-laced art and writing and sexual mores that had gone before. One of my heroes from being a teenager was Virginia Woolf. When I was a sixteen-year-old my mother encouraged me to read the essay A Room of One’s Own. She was trying to impress on me the importance of being a feminist, financially independent, and engaging in critical thought. Honestly, I was just as thrilled when I discovered Virgina Woolf had a same sex affair with Vita Sackville West. For me it was an exciting time – I loved school and discussing everything with my mum, who was finally well after having had a mental breakdown. It was just about a year between her being well and her death and it was one of the happiest times of my life – to be treated like an adult and learning about the world and challenging assumptions. It was the same love of life and feeling alive because of the intellectual stimulation that I wanted to bring out in Florrie’s initiation into the 1920s literary London.
Since March I have been dreaming of my characters and plot, as I’ve watched the story unfold, interrupt my sleep and impinge on my social life and I’ve loved having Florrie and Diana in my head – and Cam and Gloria of course. So finally saying goodbye to them leaves me feeling lost and listless. Even though it won’t hit the common beats of a romance, I wrote it because I felt compelled to write it.
So now I face the fear of what’s next. I have an idea for something completely different – a cosy(?) fantasy and I’ll get down to it on Monday. We’ll have to see if my muse, which was alive and well writing Florrie’s story, will desert me when I embark on something new and meet different characters.
Typing The End is a misnomer. Inevitably there are revisions and marketing that needs to be done, and the next idea calls to be explored. So, I’ll pause, take a breath before letting go of some of my favourite characters and release them into the world.
EV Bancroft 