Writing Under Contract

My second book was the first I had to write under contract. Having a publisher was something I had been working towards for the best part of a decade, and I felt sure that it would take the pressure off. All that stress about where to publish my work would be a thing of the past, right? Yet I found writing a contracted book to be my biggest challenge yet.

When I signed with my publisher for a two-book deal it was a dream come true. Before that I had written seven books. I wrote what I was drawn to, which included at any given time thrillers, Sci-Fi, and YA dystopia. I never planned ahead, and instead let my imagination take me wherever I wanted to go.

But once you have a relationship with an agent and a publisher you also shoulder the responsibility to please those people with the story you chose to write. You can no longer change genres at the drop of a hat. An editor who buys your unwritten book two isn’t going to tell you what to write, but you can be sure they will tell you that what you’ve written isn’t good enough.

I had a clear vision for my second book from its moment of conception. I wanted to write something about memory, how we create them, store them, and perhaps how they can be moulded to work against us. I had experienced an unfortunate reaction to some prescribed medications not long before, and as a result, lived through a brief period of memory loss myself.

But translating that experience onto the page, mixed in with all the research and imaginative plot twists I had come up with left me with a convoluted and rambling manuscript. In retrospect, I also felt for the first time a degree of creative pressure to get everything in there, because this was, quite possibly, my only chance; there might not be a book three. Contracted books also come with a deadline, and that sad realisation came when I delivered book two accordingly, all the while knowing it wasn’t as ready as I wanted it to be.

The truth was that I had struggled to mould my idea into a comprehensive plot and deliver on time. It was the first time I was required to manage the edit of one book along with the writing of a second, and I struggled. Until then I had been wholly monogamous when it came to my writing projects. And while getting signed in the first place had felt like an endorsement, sort of proof that I hadn’t been working pointlessly on a pipedream, writing to the fulfil the needs of the contract was tough.

Delivering a book that I knew I wasn’t happy with left me feeling amateurish at best. Getting it sent back to me by my editor left me wondering if I was a bit of an imposter. I’m not sure there was ever a harder funk to write my way out of.

But I realised what I needed to do was lean on some of the lessons I had learnt during the submission years. Resilience. Dedication. Determination. They all still counted just as much after getting a publisher as they did beforehand. I realised that writing book two was little different to writing any of the other books that had come before, as long as I remembered one important fact; the person who needed to be most critical, was me.

I sat down and ripped my manuscript apart, deciding what worked and more so what didn’t. I booked a meeting with my agent and editor and following that a flight to the UK, and during the five hours I spent in 16A I wrote and rewrote a new synopsis until I had something that I thought worked. It was still the book I had written, but it was streamlined and easier to follow. After taking close to a year on the first draft I turned the new version around in a little under two months and fortunately everybody was happy. Never have I been more relieved.

Writing book two was a lesson for me in many ways. I had to learn how to plan, and not let a multitude of tangents disrupt my process of writing. I had to write yes for myself, but also with others in mind. I learnt to appreciate the value of a good synopsis. I also had to learn to stop questioning myself as a writer, but remember at the same time to question everything I wrote.

I had always on some level thought a contract would justify my dream to write for a living, and to be able to pay my mortgage from an advance or royalties a demonstration of my talent. But it was never about that. Having a contract doesn’t make the creative process any easier, and it certainly didn’t make me a better writer.

Perhaps in some way it makes the process even harder because you must face the reality of third party editorial critique. But the completion of book two also taught me the most valuable lesson of all; that despite the difficulties which came with writing it, I am as in love with writing as I have always been. And as long as I remember that, I think I might be able to get through anything.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips