As I write this I am in the very final lap of my latest novel, so I’ve written this Sub Stack fast as I’ve got another thousand words to get done today. A question I often get asked is ‘how long does it take you to write a novel?’ So here’s how this one is going…
Before I start, I should explain that this novel is different to my previous works in one important respect: it’s the first one I’ve written that has, as yet, no publisher attached to it. ‘The Mitford Murders’ series was a concept dreamt up by the publisher, Ed Wood at Little,Brown (who has written a great article about how we worked together in a trade magazine, Bookseller . This meant that even as a debut novelist, I was paid to write a novel before I had written it, an extraordinary opportunity, not least because Ed was also a fantastic editor, able to guide me through my early days of fiction writing.
My standalone novel ‘The Best Friend’ (out today in paperback in the USA! Buy it here), was originally a commission by Mondadori, an Italian publishing company, in 2020. They asked if I had a half-written novel in my drawer that I’d like to finish and said they would publish it. I more or less did – I’ll write about this another week – and with lockdown, it was the perfect time to get it done. I ended up writing it in six weeks (it was a novella, so a half-length novel then, I extended it for the UK and US versions) and with the full knowledge that it would shortly be on its way to the printing presses.
But this latest novel is my first after ‘The Mitford Murder ‘series was completed. Given the collaborative nature of those six books, it was important to me that I wrote something that felt completely my own. (‘The Best Friend’ does feel my own, but it is also a very personal novel, and in many ways, the classic first novel, where I got a lot of stuff out of the way in it.) So not only did it need to be my own idea, I also wanted to finish it before I took it to my publishers – the ones I have worked with for the last seven years will, of course, be the first to see it. I’m sure whoever publishes it will have some ideas for edits and changes, that’s completely normal and fine. However, the concept, the characters, the intellectual property will be wholly mine.
It began just over a year ago. My agent and I met in Henley at the end of the summer 2022 and went for a very long walk all along the river and back again, and then for lunch, discussing the bare bones what I might write. I had some ideas already about the kind of setting I wanted the book to be in, the point in time, the dynamics I wanted to explore. We entertained different character ideas, talked about books we have loved and loathed, the kind of writing I think I’m good at, the state of publishing at the moment, what readers want. I write what I want to write but I am also happily commercial: I like the idea of a large readership, of entertaining a wide group of people. Amongst certain literary types and critics, this idea might be anathema. But my way is fun.
I then took a bit of a break. I’d written a book a year since 2010, the year my son was born. I’d also written a ton of newspaper articles, a television pilot, an extra novel, and done lengthy talks all around America. My son was embarking on the final year of his prep school and I wanted to enjoy the time with him, while he still seemed to enjoy my company and was still polite enough to laugh at my terrible jokes. We’d moved house earlier in 2022, and I wanted to spend some time working on that, and learn how to garden. I wanted to spend time with my friends, who I hadn’t seen enough of while we were all working hard and raising young children. So I did a lot of things: I dug out manure, I hung out, threw parties, picked out paints, took up oil painting classes, read a lot of books, listened to a lot of podcasts, had fun.
All the while, I pondered on the book. I liked the outline that my agent and I had talked about, I felt there was a lot there that fitted with what I wanted to write but I didn’t feel that I yet had what I can only describe as ‘the grab.’ The thing that would sit at the heart of the book, the thing that would make a reader pick it up. It’s not a crime book, so that grab had to come from a completely different place to my previous novels. But it was fine – every now and again I would check in on it, as it were, making sure my subconscious knew that this was a problem that I needed it to solve. I made little sketches of ideas, I read around the period, watched TV documentaries that I thought might feed into it, had conversations that I knew would keep my subconscious busy.
And then: it happened. I suddenly had ‘the grab.’ It came to me all at once, it felt perfect. By chance, a night or two later, I was at a party in London, a shop opening held by a friend of mine, and my agent was there. I wasn’t expecting to see her, but that’s how these things go. In the middle of a tightly-packed room, wine glasses in hand, the noisy buzz of pre-Christmas excitement, I told her the idea. It only took a sentence or two. She said: ‘That’s genius.’
So we had Christmas, and I thought about it more, and wrote things down and really began to believe in this idea. But I’m still spending time with the family, and throwing Christmas parties of my own, and having fun. I got a royalties cheque for my previous novels that I wasn’t really expecting, and that certainly helped. (I’ll do author finance another time but I can only tell you that I’m someone who is reasonably on top of this sort of thing, but the way royalties work when you have several books translated 18 times is insanely hard to keep track of.) Once everyone had gone back to school and my agent was free (she disappears for 2-3 days occasionally to read another client’s manuscript), we met up and went for another very long walk, in Hyde Park. This time we got into the detail: who everyone was, the crux of the story, the parts where the plot needed to change gears. I had character names, family set ups, ideas for the lesser-but-important plot threads that would run alongside the main one. I wrote a lot of notes down for this one. We came up with the ending and we both got chills.
That was the end of January. I think it took me another couple of weeks or so to settle down and start writing. There’s always a bit of faff but I quite like the newness of it: the setting up of a new Scrivener document and writing out the title in capital letters. Working out the initial chapters. Drawing up character lists: their names, the year they were born, their characteristics. Thinking about the back stories. Researching what was going on in the world at that time. Then, there’s no getting around it, you have to start writing.
I wrote pretty consistently all the way though from mid-Feb until around mid-May. I took a bit of time off, or took the feet off the pedal, for my son’s Easter holidays. But we didn’t travel anywhere and he plays a lot of cricket, so I could keep going. I tried not to be away from the writing for more than two days at a time. Because of the nature of this particular grab, I have been quite secretive about it. I talked about it with my agent, with a writer friend, and my son. (We had a long car journey together, I was really stuck on something and talked it out with him – he gave me a great solution.) My husband was kept completely in the dark: I wanted, when I was ready, for him to read it cold. No blurb, no preamble, nothing. Hardly anyone gets to do that, so, as a writer, you get a proper reaction.
I wrote steadily, and that was the greatest surprise. I loved these people. It was fun to write, in so many ways. When writing is going well, and you are someone who is good with your own company, it feels like the greatest privilege on earth to earn your money this way.
Inevitably, towards the end, I get a bit unstuck. There’s a wall I generally hit around 40,000 words, but I got through that OK, maybe because I know it so well now. But around 80,000 I started to wonder how exactly to finish it and also by this point, I’m kind of tired. I want to get it done. I need it to get out of my head, I need to share it and to have others help me solve the problems. And it was almost the summer, and my son’s final term at his school and all the good stuff was happening again – picnics, sport, sunshine, swimming, more parties.
So at the end of May, I felt I’d done all I could bear to do, and I gave it to my husband and my writer friend to read. They gave me their feedback, which was good, but with pointers – things I agreed with, but didn’t quite have the energy to deal with. But I did some more work and I sent it to my agent. Then I took the rest of June off.
At the beginning of July, my agent and I met in her office, and we went through the manuscript page by page. At that point it was around 89,000 words long. She loved the book, so much so, she wanted more of it: more space for certain plot lines to breathe, more space for some backstories, more development here and there. This wasn’t a line edit, it was broad brushstrokes.
So I had the MS back over the summer. I did a little tinkering with it but there were bigger things I needed to resolve – one or two characters needed a rethink in their story arcs, I needed to work out where certain plot points should hit, where the extra chapters should go. I didn’t work as much over the summer as I said I would because… well, my son and my husband were around and I wanted to see them. (My husband has been working extra hard in this last year because I’ve not been earning, strictly speaking.) I went on holiday, I had a nice time. I read a lot of books that I felt, tonally, were close to what I was aiming for. I kept thinking and I tried not to talk about it too much because I’m always worried that I’ll bore myself with the story before I’ve written if it I do that.
Then, early September, we settled our son into his new school (it’s going well, he’s happy), and I got back to work proper. My self-imposed deadline is now days away. The manuscript is now sitting at around 110,000 words, it might get a bit longer. I’ve got about two, maybe three chapters that need to be written, and a few more that need tidying up. And then my agent and I are going to talk to my UK and US publishers about it, and I hope they get excited. I don’t know yet when it will get published – I’m backing myself that it will find a home somewhere – so I can’t fully answer the question at the top of this article, for this particular book. But I’d say, for me, it looks like it takes a year to write and publish a book when it’s under contract, and you know what you’re writing; it takes a bit more than a year to write a book when you’re having fun, too.
This is so fascinating! Thank you so much for giving us a peek into work that goes into producing a book. It is, indeed, helpful. I have several artist friends (painters and photographers) and I am always curious how a blank stretched canvas becomes a gorgeous piece of art. Many say what you have about nearing the end and wanting to get the characters out of your head. You do have to love the journey. Thank you, Jessica.
Love this, Jess. I've been working on my novel for some time and just reading about your schedule and flow is inspiring and motivating. I love reading about the supporting work you're doing to bring authenticity to your work. I feel as if I've been wandering in the wilderness for forty years but I've been productive and moving forward for the past few months. I'm away right now and am continuing to do the "supporting work" for my novel and decided that I was ready to read this piece and I was right. You had the right words at the right time for me. Sending good energy for much success with this current work! Thank you for sharing the journey with us and continuing to bring your good energy to us. I am grateful. Always, Terry