A Different Kind of Juggling, or The Terror by. Sheena Wilkinson

I’ve often written on here about the juggling nature of the freelance writing life – the workshops and talks; the zooms and the travel; the admin and the hussle and the endless this-invoice-is-now-overdue chasing. It can be a struggle to find time to write, though not, I admit, anything like as hard as it was in the days when I had a day job. 

But what’s exercising me this month is a different kind of juggling. Juggling writing projects.

Right now I have four books at very different stages of development, and though I try to concentrate on one book at a time, that’s not always practical. If I get a last-minute proofing query about the book that’s being published in September, I’m not going to tell my editor that it’s not my week for that book because my mind is in a different one. Just as, if I had four children, and I was helping one with her homework and another one popped in to tell me her leg was falling off, I wouldn’t tell her to wait her turn. 

Of course I need a different mindset for each project. Here they are, in reverse order of finished-ness:

The almost-ready-to be-published book 

True Friends at Fernside, the sequel to First Term at Fernside is due out in September from O’Brien Press. The cover (another cracker from the wonderful Belfast illustrator Rebecca Elliott) has been finalised, with recent emails saying things like, ‘Please just check the colour of all the girls’ eyes’ and ‘which leg has the puppy lost?’ We’re planning meetings for publicity and marketing, and I’m also making plans for the launch. It’s one of my favourite stages of book production, though there’s always the Terror: what if we miss a proofing error? What if nobody likes it? What if nobody buys it and the publisher won’t commission a third book in the series? I can’t quite relax. 

The first-foray-into-self-publishing book

Miss McVey Takes Charge, the sequel to Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is being published in November under the auspices of Writers Review. I won’t go into details as last month’s post was all about it, but that’s also at an exciting stage, as I’m meeting with the wonderful freelance editor later this week to talk about all the finer details. She’s also going to be a doing a fair bit of hand-holding as self-publishing is so new and scary to me. I’m excited and thrilled to be taking control of getting this book out to all the people who loved the first one, and hopefully to many more, but there’s always the Terror. What if self-publishing is too hard? What if nobody buys it? I can’t quite relax.

The out-on-submission book

A historical novel is with an editor who expressed great interest in it as an unfinished project at last year’s Romantic Novelists’ Association conference. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written – a 1920s school story from an adult perspective, less jolly than Mrs Hart but a real celebration of women’s lives and friendships. It’s exciting to be at this stage – but scary. What if she doesn’t like it as much as she thought she would? What if she loves it but nobody else does? What if she wants big changes that I’m not on board with? It was great to have a genuinely interested editor as a first port of call for this book, but there’s always the Terror. I can’t relax at all and my tummy goes funny when I think about it. 

The first draft

Hooray for the first draft! It’s messy and complex and I may have overreached myself. There are two timelines and I’m not (yet) sure how well they work together. Sometimes I think it’s fresh and funny and zeitgeisty (my contemporary heroine is a novelist with Opinions); other times I worry it’s banal and clichéd. It requires a different energy from the other books: they are all finished or more-or-less finished, and any further work is very much about refining and making them the best versions of themselves. Whereas here, though I have planned the story, I surprise myself every day – or the characters do – with things I hadn’t planned for, but which instinct tells me are ‘right’. This morning, for example, I woke up realising that my protagonists’ parents aren’t dead: they’re in Spain! And at this stage, it’s easy to bring them back to life and send them off to their retirement in the sun. Anything can happen. 

It's like cleaning an old painting; you think you know what’s under all the dust and grime; you unearth a little at a time, but it’s only when you clean off all the dirt, and then give it another wipe and maybe another still, that you can see the true image below in all its brightness and detail. 

So what about the Terror? 

The Terror always lurks, but for me, when I’m deep in a first draft is the time I can most easily hold it at bay. When it’s not about editors and deals and small details; it’s all about the story.

Because at the end of the day, that’s why I do it.