The summer break is past, tomorrow is the 1st of August, the blog resumes. Not that the writing stopped. It went on at a relentless pace all through the summer, 4,000 words a week, every week, with one week off for a holiday in Portugal. The Perilous City is nearing its end. That is to say the end of the first draft. And what a thing it has become. It stands at nearly 200,000 words at the moment, with perhaps half a dozen chapters still to be written. now I know that size isn't everything, and it certainly isn't or wasn't what I planned originally. I thought it would perhaps come out at 150,000 words maximum and I wanted six sections of six chapters each. I've ended up with nearly a quarter of a million words (by the time I've finished) and more like four sections of twelve each. And when did I start writing this current novel? The 1st of August. Exactly a year ago.
As I've always said, novels are organic. I would hope that this one has not been padded, but I would say that it has grown like topsy. Characters have taken on a life of their own - Tibbie, the scarred whore with the proverbial heart of gold, Pincher the one-legged beggar and his friend Matty the fake veteran; Sary the witch-woman, Domhnall the inn keeper, and lots more besides. I needed them, I made them, but then they made themselves and I found it hard not to think to myself - what is he doing now, what is she doing now?
The real question I am going to have to face, when I come to revise this book, is how much of that growth should I prune away? Have I let the supporting characters grow so that they have now obscured the central story, which was meant to be quite bare and simple? Two sailors, one crippled, the other a drunk, washed up on the shores of the Perilous City and forced to make their living there. Tied together by guilt, but pulled apart by a woman. And both nurturing secret hopes - one for love, the other for his legs back. Which of those is more impossible, the book asks, and can the men's friendship, now dysfunctional and broken, ever be mended? Can they emerge from the shipwreck of their lives, or will they drown?
The simple answer to the pruning question is that I'm not sure, and won't be till I start editing and re-reading. I'm almost inclined to think that there are two books here, or two versions of the same book. Maybe it's like a film - the director's cut and one for public consumption. Whatever I decide to do I know that there is a lot of work still to be done. But I love these characters and I want them to shine, so the work of polishing them will have to take what it takes. And I hope in turn they will be loved by others.
