Difficult Second Album Syndrome

So, regular readers of this blog will know that last year I published a book, Dark Dates. It wasn’t a good fit for my previous publisher and I struggled to find an agent, so I thought, sod it, I’ll publish myself, and see what people say. Self-publishing has been a steep learning curve: it’s way more work than you imagine going in (although I’ve also found it more rewarding than I could have imagined) but the problem with publishing something yourself is you haven’t gone through the quality control procedure of agent-publisher-editor: there’s constantly the nagging worry in the back of your mind, the little voice saying, ‘c’mon, if this was really any good someone would publish it for you’.

Some bloggers were really kind...

So when the reviews start coming in, you pay more attention than is healthy to what people say. I’ve been very lucky with Dark Dates – the reaction has been almost overwhelmingly positive. Of course, I’d like more people to have read it (it’s still incredibly difficult to get coverage for an indie book) but those who have, have tended to love it. I’ve been blown away by the feedback I’ve got – just this week I got another rave review from Indies R Us and was selected as Book of the Month at the TBR Pile, and I also made a couple of bloggers’ ‘Top 10 of 2012’ lists. It was exciting, and thrilling, and exactly what I wanted – the fact that people actually talked about my characters, had opinions about them, cared about them: this was the very thing I got into writing for.

See? Actual nice quote by person I don't know

 

Then I had to write the sequel, and suddenly The Fear struck. What if it sucked? Lots of people said the first book was funny: the second book was darker, but I thought it still had a nice streak of humour in it – but what if it wasn’t enough? I found myself scouring the text to see if I could put in jokes (I didn’t, in the end, because I find that kind of writing tiresome, but Lord, the temptation was there). There’s more sex in this one: is it too sexy? Will people still like the characters? Will they feel let down? Suddenly all I could see in my head was a stream of reviews from people saying how disappointed they were – and the fact that I connect with a load of bloggers via social media means I’d be unable to hide from their scorn. Maybe I should just leave Dark Dates alone, treat it as a success and then move onto something completely different? It’s ridiculous given that my readers probably only number into the hundreds that I was working myself into such a state – how do properly famous writers do it? No wonder George RR Martin always seems a bit grumpy.

Fingers crossed...

 

In the end, of course, it boiled down to what it always does: having faith in the writing. When it comes down to it, I love these characters, and I’d write about them even if I was the only one who got to read the stories. They’re under my skin now and they aren’t going anywhere.

I sent the book, Wolf Night, to my beta readers who all came back with great feedback – but, importantly, also with comments on what didn’t work, and what needed to be made better (it’s good to have cheerleaders, but you also need people to be honest, especially when you don’t have the safety net of an agent or editor).

And so, after a lot of agonising, the book is out there. I’m trying to tell myself not to read reviews this time around (I can still quote the bad ones from Dark Dates) but I suspect I’ll fall at the first hurdle on that one – it really does matter to me that people like it, and don’t feel I’ve let them down. But I know it’s the best I could make it, and I know I’ve been true to the characters – and that’s all I can do, I guess. Anyway, I’m off to write the sequel now…

You can follow Dark Dates at darkdates.org

 

Guest Post: Lisa Jewell - on Sequels and Unsympathetic Main Characters

We're thrilled that Lisa has found time in her busy schedule to Guest Post on StrictlyWriting. Her new book, 'After the Party', the much-anticipated sequel to 'Ralph's Party' (Lisa's best-selling debut novel of 1999) is published tomorrow and you can read an extract from it  here.

And here's what she said about writing it...

"Many moons ago, I was looking at the prospect of renewing my publishing contract and feeling rather nervous. My previous two books had sold well, but not in proportion to my advances for them and I felt that my publishers were slightly deflated about things and slightly at a loss as to how to progress my career. I kept giving them books to publish that were good and nice but not very easy to pigeonhole (odd-looking reclusive poets in ramshackle houses for example.) So, for the very first time in my writing career I thought not about what I wanted to write next but what I thought my publishers would like me to write.

And it came to me: A Ralph’s Party sequel! I'd always said I would never, ever write a sequel. Once I've spent a year to eighteen months in the company of a group of entirely imaginary people I'm pretty much done with them and ready to meet some new people. But I felt I needed to up my game and writing a sequel to the book that had started my career all those years ago (and remains, to this day, the biggest-selling of all my books) was going to make a lot of people very very happy.

So I began to plan it in my head. And as I thought about it I realised immediately that it would be a perfect opportunity for me to write a book about a modern relationship, about one of those equal pairings formed in curry houses and beer gardens and to examine what happens to those trendy, carefree lovers after children arrive on the scene. I knew then that it would not be a contrived set-up that would include all the old players from the original as of course in real life they would not still know each other. Instead I focused on Ralph and Jem, ten years and two children down the line. I wanted their problems to reflect my own problems so set it just after the arrival of their second child, which was one of the toughest times for me and my husband in the fifteen years we've been together.

And then of course I had to write the thing. It was the most challenging book I’ve ever written. I'd thought it might be technically difficult to write about people I hadn't thought about in ten years, to make sure my references to the original book were subtle and natural and to make it readable for someone who hadn't read Ralph's Party. But actually, the technical aspect wasn’t hard at all. The hardest thing was balancing the need to portray total and utter reality, the moment by moment, second by second deterioration of a relationship with keeping everything moving along with a proper storyline. That was a tough balance to strike. If I'd let the story take over the book would have lost its authenticity, but without the story it would just have been a turgid journey through the minutiae of somebody else’s marriage.

When my editor read it she said the main problem was that she’d found Jem, the female character, unsympathetic. I found that really hard to come to terms with as so much of Jem’s persona and inner workings were based on my own and in fact I'd tempered a lot of it already to make it more palatable. I was worried that I was watering down the stark reality of long-term love to the point that the book would lose its potency, but I did it anyway. I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote for three long, hideous months. By the time I'd finally laid it to rest I was dizzy with it, had no idea what I'd written, what it was about or if anyone would even like it. But now, two days before publication I can see that it was all worth it. The book is striking a chord with people and I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Would I write another sequel? Well, you never know, maybe in another ten years, if I REALLY REALLY had to .."