“The idea of starting afresh was very tempting.”
Novelist Sarah Tierney tells how she resists the lure of the shiny new thing.
“When I read through the first draft of Making Space, after taking a couple of months off from it, I was overwhelmed by how much of it didn’t work, or wasn’t quite right. I thought it would be best to scrap the whole book and start again with something new.
The idea of starting afresh was very tempting. Before you begin writing a book, you can imagine that you’re going to create something amazing. The reality – that it’s nowhere near amazing – can be very disheartening.
The thing that stopped me starting something completely new was knowing that I’d probably feel just as disappointed when I read it through – and I’d be no closer to writing a good book. I didn’t want to spend my life writing first drafts without moving forwards.
I managed to stay motivated by listing the things I didn’t like about the first draft, working out why I didn’t like them, and most importantly, how I could change them. Once I’d pinpointed where the problems were, it didn’t feel like the whole book was wrong – just certain elements of it.
Nowadays I see this ‘I hate my book’ phase as just part of the process of making it as good as I can. Once I’ve moved from hating it to fixing it, I start to feel a lot better.”
Sarah Tierney is a graduate of the MA in Novel Writing at Manchester University, and her short story, ‘Five Miles Out’, was made into a short film by the acclaimed director Andrew Haigh. Her debut novel is Making Space, following Miriam, a twenty-nine year old temp, living with a flatmate who is no longer a friend and still trying to find her place in life. Sarah has worked as a journalist, editor and copywriter. She lives in Derbyshire with her husband and daughter and is working on her second novel.
This article was taken from the book Seven Creative Gremins. Want more inspiring author stories plus gremlin-busting motivation? Get hold of your copy here.
