So you’ve just finished the last chapter of your book. (Gasp!) You slump back in your chair, exhausted and elated. After all this time! Then you glance around, slightly bothered that the rest of the world hasn’t stopped turning to watch this momentous event. Undeterred, you physically pat yourself on the back. You’re not really sure why, but it seems to be the done thing.
Slowly, your eyes focus on the bare walls around you as the mesmerising blue light of the screen fades. Questions run about in your mind like a stampede of giant hairy chickens. What now? What else is there to do in life? When was the last time I took a shower? And how long has that glass of water been growing algae?
You shake these thoughts from your head and look with satisfaction at your word count. If you are sitting on one of those office chairs with wheels, you spin it around a few rotations with your feet dangling in the air. (I highly recommend those chairs, if for nothing else, just for this purpose.)
The big questions of life can wait. Nothing can spoil this moment! There isn’t a single more word to write. Not one … single … (though now that I think of it, there was that thing in chapter six I wasn’t quite happy about). But apart from that … (wait, what if I move that to chapter four?).
Your chair stops spinning. A strange, prickly feeling settles over you. Blast!
Editing your first draft
Now comes the editing. And it goes for a long time. Almost as long as it took you to write that draft in the first place! Every good writer does it. Why? I’d like to say because it’s good practice. But that’s not it. The truth is, you’re in love. You love that story, with its characters, its clever bits, and its little quirks. And you won’t be happy until it feels finished. Until every one of those niggling little edits in your mind is gone.
So you read back through and add more rich description. You speed up some parts, and slow other bits down. You think of another funny line to make people laugh. You ruthlessly strip out any words that are a bit dull, and add in new scenes and characters that bring those chapters to life. And guess what – those new ideas create new possibilities! Soon you can’t even remember what was in that first draft. And you don’t care, because it just got a lot better.
Here’s one thing I changed
Readers of my books might be surprised to hear that Max Mousewing, a.k.a. Agent MM, was not in the first draft of The Magician’s Daughter. I put him in later, when I realised Georgie and Thomas needed a trusted friend (and a bit of comedy relief), because nearly everyone else in that story is a suspect. Max became one of my favourites, and now it’s hard to imagine any of the books without him.
Of course, now that I had introduced a master spy, he needed his own spy code. And so I created Batty Latin and shoved that in there too. Just like you shove your favourite T-shirt in a washing machine that’s already full and watch happily as it spins around with everything else.
Is the hard work of editing worth it? Only you can answer that. But then, if you love that story, the truth is, nothing will stop you.
Have a read of this section below from The Magician’s Daughter, and try to imagine what the story might have been like without Max. Then, just for fun, why not write a secret Batty Latin message of your own?
School that week was one humiliating ordeal after another. For poor Thomas, there was no end to the cruel taunting by Edward, and Georgie herself was hardly better off. Princess Constance looked down her nose at Georgie so often that she went cross-eyed and had to take Friday off school to recover.
The situation was becoming desperate as Georgie and Thomas sat down on a park bench early one evening next to a conspicuous little bat in a miniature hat and trench coat, who was reading a newspaper.
‘You’re drawing too much attention. We’ll have to put the case on hold until you can learn to blend in,’ Agent MM said, folding up his newspaper and leaving it on the bench. ‘By the way, I think you’ll find there’s a good article on page eight.’ And with that, he flew away.
Scowling, Georgie took the newspaper and opened it to page eight. There was a message written there:
BATTY LATIN – Top Secret Code for Spies
Take the first sound of a word and put it at the end, with “atty” behind it. Then put a “bat” at the end of each phrase.
e.g. Don’t orget-fatty to do your omework-hatty-bat.
Georgie was eager to continue with their investigations, but she had to admit their cover was almost blown. Queen Olivia seemed to be constantly looking in their direction, and Edward had a permanent scowl on his face whenever they were around. Georgie wondered who would figure out she was a fake first, them or Max.
‘Here, Finnigan,’ she said, passing him the newspaper, ‘want to eat it?’
‘That shows how much you know about spying,’ Thomas retorted, shoving the newspaper into his schoolbag. He would eat it later when no one was looking.