Another Novel Again.

 I've just written "The End" on another novel. That doesn't mean it's done or that I'm going to show it to anybody. I'm entering the "baking" period. I'm going to leave it for a period of time until I'm not completely caught up in it, and can come back to it with fresh eyes and assess its myriad defects, the muddled thinking, the clumsily expressed ideas, the stilted dialogue, all of which I'm sure is lurking in the manuscript waiting to humiliate me. But for now it's done. 

I think it's pretty good, but then I would. Actually, I wouldn't, but that's a private struggle for another time. In public, out loud, selling it, I think it's pretty good. Lots of great stuff in there: ghosts, boring men, sex, grubby London flats and a train conductor in a wig. Something for everyone then, surely. 

I started writing it in 2018, I think. I wrote half of it, had to go off and do something else, and didn't come back to it until a few months ago, when I read it, liked it, and wondered what happened next. That's, accidentally, a really good way to write a book. I have no idea what I originally intended for the ending or if I'd even thought of one, but coming back to it fresh after so long it seemed obvious to me where the story had to go. It demanded to go there and that's where I took it. All I had to do was all the writing!

Anyway, I'm done. The book must bake. I'll come back to it in a couple of months and see what I have. But for now it's complete and I deserve a long lie down in a darkened room. 

It's called "How Ghosts Affect Relationships" by the way. I like the title, at least.