I’ve been thinking deeply about just what it is I want to be doing here on Substack. What can this place offer that the other online venues I frequent just can’t?
I think the answer to that question is “intelligent feedback”. The audience here is simply unlike anywhere else on the internet, with a preponderance of highly creative people, whether writers themselves or not.
How best to make use of the gift of your attention, then?
So, I thought it was about time I honoured a commitment to myself to finish a novel that I’ve been working on for a very long time.
I’ve been searching for the inspiration and energy to make progress and get the thing finished but, as you know by now, I’ve had a pretty rough ride over the last few years, which severely dented my motivation to make progress with my fiction. But here I am, with the first inklings of an idea to leave all that behind and set a new course.
So, what’s the plan?
Firstly, reveal the fact that a manuscript exists at all, so that you can badger me to make progress.
Secondly, to open up the Scrivener file and start chipping away at the story again, however slowly.
Thirdly – and this is thanks to a “Eureka!” moment prompted by reading the work of
– I’ve had a real breakthrough with my worldbuilding, an aspect of fantasy that I really love. I’ve probably created hundreds of maps over the years, and something that should have been blindingly obvious just smacked me in the face a few days ago. All will be revealed in due course!Fourthly, to perform the finished chapters in audio format, which I hope will be entertaining for you and challenging for me, both in terms of the storytelling and practising matching appropriate voices to the characters1. I’ve already done a few, and it’s quite incredible how reading one’s own work aloud can reveal a lot about the style and cadence of the writing – especially where it’s not working! After all, if I’m stumbling over the language when I read it aloud, then that’s what the reader will be experiencing too, so edits are needed.
Finally, over a period of what I imagine will be many months, I hope to get to the point where I have, at the very least, a decent, finished first draft, at which point I can draw the curtains behind me and get on with polishing the rough gemstone to achieve a fully-faceted diamond that people are prepared to pay money for and which I will be proud to see on the shelves.
And of course, then it’ll be time to do it all over again.
I also want to thank so many of the folks I know in The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) who I have witnessed doggedly pursuing their writing and publishing dreams over the years, despite all the ups and downs, and a particular shout-out to my friend
, author and editor (though she’s already told me that fantasy isn’t her bag so I’ll need to find someone else to do that job in due course) whose single-minded determination to write her remarkable stories is an inspiration.I designed this temporary cover ages ago. Dusting it off, it’s not that bad!
I hope you enjoy the recording.
Henry
Audio recording, text and cover design © Henry Hyde 2024
I’m a huge fan of Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series of novels and the staggering narrative talents of Steven Pacey who read them for Audible.
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