(This is a replacement post for one which went missing when my website crashed on Boxing Day – something very similar to this, but not exactly the same, was originally posted mid December)
I’ve finished First Aid Four!
Which sounds very impressive, but really, though I’ve typed the words “The End”, this is just the beginning.
I’ve reached the end of the STORY, I know what happens in the end, and how it happens, but now I have to go all the way back to Chapter 1 and make it work properly. I always end up discovering new things about the characters and the plot on the way to the end, which means I have to go back and tweak things at the start and in the middle.
Also this draft is far too long, very repetitive and not very well written. Nope. It’s not very well written. Which is fine. I never worry about the words when I’m writing a first draft, I just try to follow the story and hear the characters. So now I need to take out the clichés and the long-winded sentences, and make the language sharper and stronger. I really enjoy cutting and tidying a story. The first draft is my way of discovering the story, and the editing brings it to .
So having rattled through writing the novel I will now spend several happy months editing it.
However, I wasn’t always happy when I was writing it (quite aside from nagging feelings of guilt about all those dreadful injuries and terrible dangers). In the last week of writing, when I was working out how to defeat the baddie and trying to find a happy ending for anyone left standing, I was starting to feel quite strange. Nervous. Sad. And I couldn’t work out why. Until I realised that this is the last book in the series. There were only ever meant to be four First Aid for Fairies books. And this is the last one.
So this is the last book I will write with Helen, Yann, Lavender, all their friends and all their enemies. And I’m going to miss them.
I know I’m going to spend the next few months editing this book. And probably the rest of my life reading bits of all the books in the series out loud in school halls. But last week when I was able to see the end of the story, it was like I was reaching the end of a journey with these characters. Editing is really just writing the postcards and tidying the photos. We’ve already done the exciting bit. So I feel like I’m already saying good bye to them.
Normally when I’m finishing a book, I find it fairly easy to say bye to the characters because I’m already making scribbly notes about a possible sequel. But this time, I haven’t been doing that, and even though it was my decision to make this a series of four, because I have other books I want to write, I do feel very sad that I’m not going to spend more time with Helen and the fabled beasts. I feel like I’m walking away from them!
So this time, the end really is the end. But I still have all that editing to do, so I’d better get back to it…
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