The Second Coming

The next installment of the “Milligan” novels may not quite rank up there for expectation with the return of the Son of God or even The Stone Roses’s follow-up attempt (vaingloriously and gloriously entitled The Second Coming), but it is quite a big thing in my little world. So at this very early stage of writing my new novel I thought I would share a few observations on what is, or at least seems different this time around.

1. The pressure of the first time is gone. As with other activities, the first time can be daunting. Performance anxiety seems to diminish.
2. There’s a fear instead that maybe the first time was as good as I’ll ever get. Plenty of writers’ first books were their best. Joseph Heller was once asked by a mean-spirited journalist how it felt to have failed to write anything as good as “Catch 22” in the years that followed that book’s publication. “Not so bad” he replied, “I mean who has?” Great retort, but I fear that the quality of “Milligan and the Samurai Rebels”, proud of that novel as I am, is not sufficient to allow me to paraphrase Heller if my next books disappoint.
3. My planning has become more structured. I now have a better idea what ingredients are needed to make a story come together. Less time is needed to fret over writing style and characters, since those questions were mostly answered with the first novel. Instead I can worry about the story arc, the balance between the true history and the fiction, and how I’m going to get enough sex into the book.
4. I’m doing less editing as I go along. All the guidance says something along the lines of “don’t obsess about the editing as you write it, just bash on through to the end and then edit”. Sorry, couldn’t do it. For my first novel, the first page was the only page of my creative writing in existence (or at least since ‘O’ Level English classes) so I couldn’t cope with it being imperfect. I spent months on the first thirty pages, and the final version bears only a passing similarity to the first stab. And I don’t think this was a mistake; I needed to find a writing style and get the character of Milligan right. Bashing on through to the end of the plot would have been a mistake. That doesn’t apply this time, so bash on I will.

The stuff that stays the same? Mainly not having enough time to write the bloody thing.