It’s a thought that lurks almost constantly on the sidelines of my mind: why is it taking so long to write my novel?
It is now five years since I penned a synopsis for my current work-in-progress, and three years, almost to the day, that I drafted my first chapter. Admittedly, in that time I wrote and published my memoir, The Banana Road, but still, it seems to me an inordinate amount of time to spend on something that has yet to see daylight.
But when I look at some of the notable debut novels I have enjoyed – Shuggie Bain took 10 years to write, Lessons in Chemistry and The Time Traveller’s Wife both took five years – I’m in some very esteemed company.
Looking back on the multiple delays and re-drafts my novel has been subjected to, there appear to have been two dominant time-consumers: contextual and structural.
Contextual delays
In the three years that have elapsed since I wrote the first chapter, contextual factors probably account for some 70% of the delays.
Not least of those was moving into our current home. Settling into the house, exploring our immediate surroundings, getting into the rhythm of village life, all took time and impacted on our creativity. There are times when life demands to take top spot in our mental list of priorities and moving house is one of them.
Throughout 2023 and the first part of 2024 we were still working with Inntravel. During those 18 months we put together walking holidays in La Palma, Emilia Romagna, South Devon, Aracena and Puglia, all of which consumed a sizeable chunk of the calendar. When, in early 2025 we tended our notice to Inntravel, we switched our focus to our own work. For a few months, that was when I really moved my novel forward, drafting some 50,000 words.
Structural delays
Last weekend, when the question, ‘why is it taking so long to write my novel’ installed itself at the forefront of my brain, I realised I had made a seismic structural shift in the novel which necessitated a significant re-write.
The shift occurred at the London Festival of Writing last summer when an agent whose opinion I highly respected, told me that as a debut author, I stood very little chance of having a trilogy taken on. When the aftershock of that implosion settled, I tried to figure out a way to bring the story to a satisfactory ending in a single volume. For a long time, I could not get my brain to accept that this could be achieved in any way short of a Deus ex machina moment which I flatly refuse to contemplate.
Even as I sent my draft to Jack as my alpha reader, I still felt deeply unhappy about the ending. It seemed manipulated, like I had simply got bored with writing the thing and decided to end it. I was left feeling demotivated and unwilling even to action Jack’s edits. Then I came across a word I had never encountered before.
Reading one of The Bookseller newsletters that list which authors have been taken on by which agents, I saw a tiny piece that reported an agent winning a three-way auction to sign a debut writer’s duology. I did a mental double take – duology. I had never heard the word before.
A Duology Dawns
Please don’t ask me to explain why the concept of writing two books instead of three never occurred to me. Nor why encountering a fancy word for a two-part story should have such a profound effect on my brain because I have no logical explanation. All I can say is suddenly the insurmountable wall ahead of me has shrunk and steps have appeared at its base.
It feels like the brightest sunrise, the sweetest summer morning and the most fragrant bud opening all at once. No longer will I try to shoehorn my trilogy into a single novel. Instead, I will create a duology. Not only do I now have an acceptable way forward, it’s a much better way. The whole story can be tightened up so it moves at pace.
From reading The Bookseller newsletters, I know that agents invariably offer new authors two-book deals – perfect. But even if agents don’t want to risk a duology any more than a trilogy, I’ll simply self-publish instead. Now I’m no longer faced with the unsettling notion of whether, at the current pace, I’ll even live long enough to write my trilogy; I’m only writing two novels.
Suddenly my writing world is a brighter place.
Of course, that does necessitate another structural re-write – d’oh!
