Week 38 - Second Drafts and Other Assorted Topics

As I reach the two thirds stage in my second draft, the Q word is starting to raise its head.

That’s Quality of course.

Structurally, the book is beginning to pull itself into shape; characters have been embedded and the plot gaps and contradictions have been ironed out.

But is it any good?

If I am honest with myself, I would have to answer: “I don’t know.”

That, of course, is one of the central problems we face as writers.

It’s an odd thing, but I often read published novels and just accept that they’re of a certain standard because they’ve been published. But when I think about it, their dialogue can be clunky; the plot resolution can be as satisfying as watching a movie via dial up internet access; and the characters are as memorable as that Powerpoint presentation you sat through last week on paperclip overspend...

Yet the operative word in all that is, “published.”

Assuming the author’s father/husband/old school friend happens not to own the publishing house, the chances are that they thought it was good enough.

So who’s wrong?

The answer is no one - taste is about as subjective as it is possible to get (just look at teenagers and their bottom revealing jeans, or the whole of the 1970s for that matter).

The simple fact is that we are not always the best placed people to assess our work. It’s a bit like learning the guitar: we know how it should sound - and we know how it sounds when we hear it played well, but when we strum the strings, it sounds different.

We need to develop our inner ear...we need to have some belief...and sometimes we just need to let rip like an Eric Clapton encore.

I think I’ll dig out that Derek and the Dominoes album.