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Flember - The Secret Book

Okay let’s do this. FLEMBER - The Secret Book is released October 2019, published by David Fickling Books, and HERE’S THE COVER!

Flember is the story of Dev, a young inventor whose creations don’t always go to plan. When one day he not only builds a huge robot bear, but also brings it to life, what should have been his greatest achievement rapidly descends into chaos.

Flember - The Secret Book is a highly illustrated novel by me, Jamie Smart, and it’s my debut. It’s a great big adventure, funny, sweet and heartbreaking all at the same time. I really hope you’ll enjoy it!

I’ll be posting up more artwork from inside the book as we get nearer to release!

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The artwork is done.

At the beginning of October, I started work on the illustrations for Flember. I had nearly 200 drawings to do in just two months, and I don’t mind admitting it felt like an absolute mountain to climb. To get it done I’ve been doing seven day weeks ever since, getting up at 5 and working through till the evening. This is a foolish way to work. I’ve been running on fumes for the last stretch of it.

But it’s all done.

I thought I’d be elated at the end of it, but I wasn’t. I felt absolutely crushed. When I sent the last few pages over I buried my head in my hands and stared at the floor. And I can’t quite explain why. I *think* it was because this marked the end of such a long, long journey, and now it was finished I couldn’t change it anymore. Oh sure I can still tweak here and there before we go to print, but the book, the thing itself, is finished, and I have to be happy with what it is. Up until now it has been malleable and changeable. Now it’s done I’m committed to say yeah this is it and flipping heck what if it’s no good.

For context, while this pile of drawings represents a big chunk of work, here, alongside it, is the last few years worth of sketches and notes to even reach this point:

This is why I’m so invested in this book. I don’t think I’ve ever put as much of myself into anything, or spent as many years trying to get it ready. In that pile are not only all the sketches I did trying to find the right style, over and over again, but an earlier version of the book which I (foolishly) illustrated in full, as well as Flember comics I drew in the very early days before I even knew it was going to be a novel.

I’ve talked a fair bit on this blog about the writing process, how long it has taken for me to become good enough, to tell the story effectively, and how demoralising (at times) the revision process can be. But I haven’t spoken much about the artwork side of things. I wanted this to be a novel, a body of words, with illustrations to support it. But as you might expect, the book itself has evolved as we’ve put it together, and the words and illustrations have become intertwined. 

I’ll post up more about the artwork in future - it’ll be fun to show how the style has changed over the years, as well as showing previews of how the book looks now (while being careful not to spoil anything). In the meantime, I need a big drink and a sleep.

Flember is released in October 2019.

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First design meeting!

I know it’s been over a year since I’ve updated this blog. There are reasons, i’ll detail them later in this post.

For now though I just wanted to share some exciting news. We have a release date for Flember pencilled in - Autumn 2019! Why so long - well, before a book is released, there is a ton of promotion that needs doing, not to mention book fairs, rights, all that legal stuff. It all takes a long time. Does that mean I’ve a year off? Not a bit of it. The text for Flember is finished, done, copyedited to within an inch of its life, which is wonderful. Now I need to draw the illustrations, and they preferably need doing by this December. Which, with my other work on the side, is quite a tight deadline for me. Not only that, but we need a front cover done and finished by the end of August, something we can start showing around a year ahead of time. So I have a lotttt to be getting on with.

This all came to light because today I had my first lunch meeting with Rosie, my editor, and Alison, the designer. This was immensely exciting for me - after years of working on the book, this is finally the stage where things get serious. We discussed, for example, the size of the book, the paper type, what fonts we’d be using, all the finer details which go into making reading a book such an enjoyable experience. I’d sent over a handful of initial illustrations for us to look over and start working out how they’d be placed within the text. So today felt like a huge milestone - while I have a fair amount to do before this book is ready for print, the wheels behind it have all now started turning and we’re taking the long run towards publication!

As for why I’ve been so quiet, two reasons. Mainly because the last year has been spent batting the manuscript back and forth between myself and Rosie. Editors aren’t there to rewrite things for you, they’re there to point out things you need to think about, and as a result that often means spending a fair while rebuilding parts of the book. Well for me, anyway. It hasn’t been constant work - one side has to wait a couple of months for the other side to read/rewrite it, etc - but it has been a continuous process. With the last draft i sent over, the one which is now locked in, i said to Rosie i had become almost snow-blind by this book now, that i’d stared at it so so many times that i was starting to lose my grip on what was working and what wasn’t. Fortunately, this happened to be the draft for tidying up a few tiny little details, relatively easy, and we’re all really happy with the book. I’m super happy, actually. The plot’s nice and clear, it’s exciting, the characters are likeable, and the sub-plots all spin around and resolve satisfactorily. 

The second reason I’ve been so quiet is that over the past year i’ve been working on the illustrations. I’ve been thinking about them a TON. This is obviously a very different medium than comics, what I’m used to, so i’ve been trying to work out how to use my style most efficiently. I’ve been devouring influences, other books, other artists, looking for ways to make everything fit together. I’ve created a heck of a lot of artwork for this book, none of which will be seen, which is why i haven’t posted it up - i wasn’t sure what would be spoilers and what not. But now I’ve finally, finally, settled on a way to work, and an application of my style, that we’re all really happy with. 

So, in the next blog post, I’m going to start posting up some of my preparatory Flember artwork, and showing the process of how much it has all changed.

But in the meantime, YAY. RELEASE DATE!

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Draft 9

I worry, a lot, that writing these things makes me look like an amateur. Like the charlatan I often feel. That perhaps I’m revealing too much about all the work, and how much editing, is going into this book. I’ve been calling this draft ‘Draft 9′, but to be honest, I’ve pretty much lost count by now.

HOWEVER

This feels like an important draft. It feels like all the other drafts have been leading here for a reason.

When I first started this book, many, many years ago, I assumed I knew how to write. Upon being informed that I, in fact, didn’t, I started looking for guidance. And a lot of the guidance confused me. There are certain basic rules for writing, the most cliched of which is ‘show don’t tell’, and all its many offshoots. ‘Never use the word ‘was’ when you’re describing something’ was one that stuck in my mind. And then, never describe things, instead describe the characters experiencing those things.

Thing is, all the fiction I read, great books by great authors, they all ignored those rules. Great clumps of exposition. Characters explaining things to each other. Was, was, was, endless wasses (wasii?). I found it really perplexing.

Still, I stuck to the rules. Rigidly. As soon as Flember was signed with DFB, and these editorial rounds began, I was aware I was stepping in with the professionals now, and keen to show what I knew. So these edits went on, and slowly, my story took shape. The plot, and the structure, and the language, we tackled it all, we polished it all, and very slowly Flember evolved into something closely resembling a proper book.

Something was missing though. I’d been feeling it for a while myself, but not quite recognised it. And it took my editors to spell it out.

In trying so hard to follow the rules, i’d completely lost my voice. All the flair and tone and the thrill of narrating which I had put into my first draft had all been chiselled away by the 8th. In trying so hard to get it ‘right’, I’d sanitised it all. This was supposed to be a funny book, not hilarious, but funny, and yet I couldn’t recall one single funny thing in it.

It was a revelation to me that I’d allowed myself to forget the point of all this. And that the book would suffer mightily for it. But it was important it happened, I think. Over the last few years I’ve learnt about my story’s structure, and worked hard to ensure it flows according to all the rules, and now I get to go back in and break them. With all the confidence of someone who knows, at least a little better, which can afford to be broken. This is the thrill of being an author, and what experienced authors know intuitively.

This, it has taken me this long to realise, is what creates books.

Sidenote: All this time editing has prevented me from working on the illustrations. But similarly, this feels to the book’s benefit. Another reason for the more recent editing rounds was to focus the book, to remove the overly flowerly language and the cul-de-sac ambles, and simplify it. Keep it moving, keep it purposeful. Every character earns their place, every chapter deserves to be there. This has really filtered through to the drawing part of my brain. That, and researching artists I like who work in very simple styles. I have a much clearer notion now of how I want the art in this book to look, and plan to lose a lot of the frills which otherwise would have crowded it.

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Draft 6

I’ve just sent draft 6 off to the publishers. I thought I’d been working on it for two months, but looking at the date, it has only been four weeks. Clearly, a quite intensive four weeks. I took a lot of notes after our last meeting - there were things which needed rectifying in my previous draft. Some of the minor characters, their storylines just kind of tailed off. Some of the plot wasn’t clear enough. And the main characters weren’t quite gelling as they should, weren’t bouncing off each other. The story itself deals with death, there are some quite dark turns in it, but my main characters are intended to be humorous throughout so that’s a balance I need to get right.

I feel pretty braindead now though. I put in whole new chapters, replaced whole other chapters, and redid the whole last five chapters. There was a lot of heavy lifting gone into this draft, more than previous ones. I think it’s looking good now, really good, everything feels like it ties up. The threads work. Oh, I’m sure there might be another draft to do, a round of intensive close edits, changes yet to come. But it’s a long stride further along than it was.

I worry, however, saying I’m on draft 6, as if that makes it sound like the book is awful, or has been awful, or is in trouble. I’m assured by other authors that multiple drafts is quite normal, but still. There’s a slight shame in there somewhere. Not least because every time I send a draft in, I’m pleased with it, but every time I return to that draft, it looks terrible. I see huge glaring inconsistencies, bad writing, clunky structures. And it worries me, am I going to see that every time I go back to it?

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The Long Road

I’m aware I haven’t updated this blog since June. Every time I wanted to, I felt guilty that I wasn’t spending that time writing instead. I apologise, but I can sum up what’s been happening in one, long, word.

Editttttiinnnggggg.

I think this year I’ve done four drafts of the book. Each draft has gone back to the publisher, they’ve come back with notes. We’ve back and forthed like this repeatedly. Each draft I do takes a couple of weeks, but that’s just the writing - I spend a long time thinking before I start actually writing. Trying to lock the feedback, the new ideas, down and make them coherent.

Sending in a new edit, and then being sent away to re-edit, yeah, it doesn’t feel so great. You feel like you’re an amateur, that proper writers don’t get repeatedly sent away like this (although I’m assured they do), that the stuff you’re handing in to a major publisher is just not good enough. Over, and over.

That’s one half of it. The other half, for me, is exciting. The chance to add, and refine, to flesh out certain parts of the world, to strengthen the characters, and weave the plot even more delicately, that’s thrilling to me. The analogy of a writer being like a sculptor given a block of stone and having to chip away to find his statue inside it - it’s a cliched one, but it’s so true. Every re-edit is another chip away at the stone. Getting closer every time.

Good editors are great at finding what isn’t working, and not so much telling, but asking you to think about it. Over a lunch of salt and pepper squid, I had a long conversation with David, my publisher, about plots and sub-plots. I’d been telling him about all the spin-off tales I had planned for my world, all the other characters, what their lives were like, and how their adventures would leave tiny clues for the main book. His suggestion was to put more of those microstories into the big story itself, to weave them in rather than keep them separate. These were the notes we took.

That’s us discussing plots and sub-plots.

That’s us discussing how sub-plots interact and inform the longer story. I know, it’s weird random scribbles. But just pointing these things out to me - things I knew, but wasn’t doing - that’s what fired me to go back and try again. And againnnn.

I got the notes back on my latest edit this week, and there were still things I needed to do. Again, those feelings of being a hopeless amateur resurface, but they’re overtaken by the excitement of where else I can take my story, to make the whole thing even better. You have to remind yourself that with every draft you write you get a little bit better than the last one, so all of this is worth it. This long, long road, it has to be worth it.

I probably won’t post again until early next year, when I’ve done the latest draft. Hopefully soon after that, we will do close edits (ie picking at the grammar and finer details), and I can get started on the illustrations. With that in mind, this blog should become a lot more illustrated in 2017.

Thanks for sticking with me!

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JUST SENT THE NEW DRAFT

I saw this cartoon by the brilliant Rachael Smith today and it pretty much sums up the feeling:

It’s such a vulnerable experience, sending your new draft. It feels like waking up on stage with no clothes on. You’re presenting something as your Best Work (new version), and all you can do is wait by your emails to see what they think. Your brain fills in the gaps, and imagines peals of mocking laughter coming from the other end. Art’s immensely personal, and judgement on it is judgement on you.

As it happens, though, I’m quite pleased with this new draft. I think it’s reading clearly, and the scenes are a lot stronger. I do put a lot of work into my new drafts, often rewriting whole chapters, and usually I’m just sick of the whole thing by the end of it. But this time I’m quietly optimistic.

One thing I worked on was the main characters’ emotions. In the notes from the publisher, it was suggested that I could really ramp up how our protagonist was feeling, to really carry the reader through. It’s an excellent point, and something I hope I’ve addressed. If not, overdone.

Editing is not a process I enjoy much. It’s slow, demoralising, and takes a lot of concentration. Cutting a paragraph down so it reads perfectly is, of course, a huge thrill when it happens. But getting there, or close to there, is a mountain. One thing I did this time, after working through the book chapter by chapter, was then go back and edit chapters at random. This way, I could view each chapter as its own scene, and build it as such. Make sure it had a beginning, middle and end. Dress the stage. Push the actors on. It was a great way to see which scenes were weaker too - taking them out of the context of the story, it really exposed their technical flaws.

So, I’ll wait for news.

On the illustration side, I’ve been working a few things out in relation to my previous post. I think I’m finding a technique I really like, inks rather than pencils, but I’ll need a few more weeks to find out. Hopefully this might be all going in the right direction!

(Please refer me back to this blog post when everything comes crashing down at a later stage)

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I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN, I knew in setting up this blog I’d end up having to write things I didn’t necessarily want my publisher to see. If I was truly going to detail the ups and downs of making this book, I’d have to make my problems public. Normally you can choose what you show your employers, you can pretend you’re capable, a pro, but I did promise myself I’d be honest here.

We had a meeting last week in London. I’d been reworking the first six chapters based on their notes and the good news is they were very happy with them. A few more tweaks here and there, but I’d pinned down the story and addressed the problems. Great relief! Now I need to go into the rest of the book with this new found knowledge and apply it all there.

The main issue that did arise, however, is the illustrations. I thought this side of things would be easier than the words, since I’m a little more used to drawing my ideas than writing them, but this has become part of the problem.

The illustration above (and I think I’m allowed to show it - albeit with something in the sky whited out - since we’re probably not going to use it anyway) was how I pitched the illustration style. Drawn in pencil, with a watercolour wash added digitally. It’s a lot more labour intensive this way, but the end result feels like a finished rough, nicely spontaneous, and with a storybook-sorta feel that I want the whole thing to have.

The publishers weren’t too keen. They suggested I try a much simpler style, less fussy, less detailed. A bit more focussed. The reasons were twofold: Firstly, the paper stock we were most likely to use (cheaper, novel-size paper) wouldn’t reproduce this style as well as I might like. Secondly, they explained, it might be nicer to show these sights in the words, not the illustrations, and allow the reader to use their imagination more. Keeping the illustrations as suggestive, atmospheric, lighter of touch.

I will be absolutely honest with you here. This has totally spun me out. On the one hand, I could totally agree with them. In my years of drawing comics, I’ve always crammed action into every inch of the panel - I have an irrational fear of leaving any blank space. I’m controlling. I want you to see exactly what’s in my head, I want to dictate it through my art. There’s very little subtlety in what I do. And I thought, moving into illustrated fiction, I would be doing the same. I would be showing you these scenes. When the publisher suggested I could perhaps leave more to the imagination, it made sense. The words are there for a reason, to guide, to invoke images in the reader’s mind. The illustrations shouldn’t then be stamping over them.

But on the other, I don’t know how else to do it. I want to show the reader how I see these things, i want to draw the tiles on the rooftops, the cobbles on the streets and (nearly) every leaf on the trees. There’s a joy in that for me. Since leaving the meeting, my head has been thinking about very little else. I’ve been studying how other writer/illustrators do it, looking for examples of both how I was planning it, and how else it can be done. And then trying to work out how to apply the latter to my own style. And there’s a real sense of panic in my chest, of having to confront simplicity rather than throwing everything at the page. I can feel it now, just typing this. It makes me insanely uneasy.

I’ll spend the next few weeks working out ways to do it. And if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, then I guess we need to discuss it more. In any situation like this there’s always the possibility that you’re envisioning a different kind of book than your publisher is, and if that happens, well, the important thing is to make the best book you can. And in being tested like this, in forcing me out of my comfort area and asking me to really, REALLY think about what I’m doing here, I’m confident we’ll get the best book we can.

But right now, I have absolutely no idea what it’s going to look like.

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The Fear

I’VE BEEN PROCRASTINATING LIKE MAD. Every night my heart is excited to start work the next day, but every morning my head finds anything it can to avoid it. I’ve procrastinated before but this feels different. This book means so much to me, I think I’ve actually become scared of it.

I’m trying to concentrate on the illustrations. I’ve spent a long time thinking about what medium to use, and I keep ending up back at pencils, so I’m trying to work up a few finished pencil pieces to see how they might look. Pencil keeps in fitting with the ‘storybook’ style I’m after, something a little more classical, but it’s all still open to experimenting.

I’ve done whole books in pencil before. And let me say it is a paiiiiiiin. Pencil work takes so much more out of you than inking does, it’s a much bigger emotional investment. It’s also slower, and harder. When it works, lovely, but you can also lose whole days scrapping your mistakes.

I think that’s why I’m so scared. I’m walking down a path I’m not sure I want to go. Committing myself to maybe 80 or so illustrations in a tricky medium. And then if the book does well, and the series happens, potentially hundreds more.

This fear is of being utterly overwhelmed, and having to drag yourself through it. Because I know I’ll be mostly happy with the end result, I just need to do the work.

I just need this fear to let go of my wrist.

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THIS IS BOJA. BOJA IS A HUGE ROBOT BEAR.

The other day I introduced Dev as the hero of our story. He is, but Boja is our other hero. Dev and Boja quickly become best of friends, despite Boja eating, running into, or falling on top of everything Dev holds dear. Boja isn’t smart, nor is he well liked, but he holds an immense power which Dev will come to rely on.

I’m still sketching around with these designs, trying to find them - even though I’ve been drawing these characters for years and years, I still don’t feel like I’ve 100% nailed them, so with each new drawing I’m trying to lock in their looks a little tighter. While keeping it loose, which I agree sounds like a contradiction. It’s hard to show spontaneity when you’re struggling with the basic frame every time.

The Boja pics along the bottom aren’t quite the right proportions, actually the pictures kinda annoy me, but they demonstrate aspects of his character so I’ve included them here. More soon!

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PLEASE MEET DEV. DEV IS OUR HERO.

Dev is an inventor. He loves new ideas, new solutions, pulling things apart to see how they work and then building something out of the remains. Unfortunately, while Dev is insatiably curious, he’s also impulsive and impatient, and so his inventions never quite work like they should. It’s hard to fault his enthusiasm though, and his thirst for discovery, whatever destruction they leave in their wake.

I’m really excited to finally start showing some of the characters from this book, so let’s start with our protagonist. Dev has an exceptionally steep learning curve ahead of him - while this book is intended to be fun and funny, Dev’s curiosity is going to throw up some very serious consequences.

Hooray!

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THE WHAT IFs AND THE WHY DIDN’Ts

SO I HAD MY MEETING WITH THE PUBLISHER a couple of weeks ago, and it all went well. This time around, we concentrated on the first 6 chapters - by and large okay, but still with a few small hitches in the story which needed talking about. If you’ve ever had counselling, you’ll know counsellors tend to ask the questions that make you think, rather than telling you the answers. And so it was - “Why does this character act like this?” “That seems a strange thing to happen,” etc etc. There were issues about getting the voices of each character right, as well as a need to simplify plot points a little bit. I tend to overcomplicate. I do, though.

I can never answer their questions face to face, I prefer to mull it over in my own time, and on the train home I began working it all out. It’s exciting, feeling that sense of the storyline getting clearer as the detritus is clawed away from the key points. However, coming up with new, better ways to tell the tale does bring up my biggest insecurity about this -

Why didn’t I think of these things before?

This morning I had a flash of inspiration about one aspect of the story. It’s a background part of it, it’s literally something to do with the scenery, but it makes everyone’s motivations so much clearer. And, with just a few nods towards this detail, i can replace character-describes-something-to-other-character (always clunky) with no-need-to-mention-it-we-know-it’s-happening. It’s the cliche rule, “show, don’t tell”, and since it feels so blindingly obvious now, why didn’t it occur to me before? 

There have been LOADSSS of moments like this over the years. Suddenly realising something, even just a little detail, which improves the whole story. And each time I think phew, lucky the book wasn’t in print yet, at least i can go back in and change it. Improve it. This worries me a lot. How do you know that the story is actually ready? Is it ever ready? How will I let go of this thing? There’s always something else to improve. ALWAYS. Handing this book over to the printers is going to be a nightmare of self-doubt, isn’t it.

Next blog post I’ll start showing some of our main characters, I think it’s about time. Might take my mind off the words.

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I HAVEN’T UPDATED FOR A WHILE I know I know. I sent the revised (read: completely rewritten) manuscript to the publishers just over a month ago, and so have been doing other work while waiting for their feedback.

I’m heading up to their offices for a meeting about it all next week. If I can be honest, I’m more than a bit terrified. Writing’s a really exposing, personal, thing, you feel like any judgement on your work is a judgement on you. So awaiting the verdict of not only Those In Charge, but Those Who Know Form, Structure And Character Better Than You Do is pretty intimidating. And they’ve given me no clues - whether it’s good, bad, a disaster - despite my constant fishing over the last few weeks. So I’m going in blind, assuming the Please Don’t Tear My Book Apart pose, hoping beyond hope that they like it.

If you’re my publishers and you’re reading this, I hope you like it. Sorry if you don’t. Argh flipzzcksckz.

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MY PUBLISHER SUGGESTED I THINK ABOUT WAYS THE TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS CAN WORK TOGETHER but I kinda already knew. I want Flember to look like a storybook, to have a classical feel to it. Illustrations sitting proudly beside the text. No messing around with the typography, no speech bubbles. Just a solid, modern fairytale.

Recently, however, I saw a novel where someone had doodled on one of the pages. The image had obscured a hefty chunk of the text, but it was thrilling. Suddenly, the words become background noise, as the image lunges out towards you. The flow of the story becomes way more important than the details of what’s readable and what isn’t - suddenly you’re in the moment.

I always thought this way with my comics. The text is part of the artwork, for me at least. As such it doesn’t matter if every word is readable. If a huge monster lurches up in front of someone’s speech bubble, obscuring it, then that’s absolutely fine. It gives far bigger weight to the action than anything I could verbally describe. The narration becomes casualty to the impact.

I knocked up a few (rough) samples to show what I mean, and have sent them to the publisher to get their opinion. One of them is above. This character, and these writings, aren’t from the Flember book so I’m not giving anything away, it just serves as an example.

I don’t know if they’ll go for it, to be honest I’m not 100% convinced, there’s a big risk it could be annoying for the reader. It would certainly need a lot more fine tuning. But whether we do it or not, I think it’s a fun idea.

(In the meantime, the publisher is currently reading my latest draft of the manuscript and I’ll be honest, I am flipping nervous. Every time I read it back, all the words look terrible. Weird to want an opinion, but to be dreading actually getting it.)

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I’VE FINISHED THE LATEST DRAFT but have I though? How do I know? I mean, I’ve spent the last few weeks kicking away at this thing, trying to make every thread connect, trying to motivate every character, trying to give away enough but not too much. Trying to make it all into one coherent ball of something. I want it to be funny, but also dramatic, in a well-realised world, with characters who act consistently. I’ve checked and double-checked all the names match up, everyone’s where they’re supposed to be, the action breaks to let everyone catch their breath. I’ve checked the spelling and grammar, the sentence structure, I’ve cut out a lot of ‘said’s, I’ve had the characters live and feel things rather than expositioning all over the place. I’ve tried to make a THING, from the dust of all the other THINGS, and to me that THING doesn’t look terrible.

And yet. It’ll get carved apart when I send it to the editors. I know it will. I know there’ll still be things which don’t add up, things I’ve missed. Sentences I’ve destroyed, scenes I’ve ruined, and parts which need scrubbing clean. That’s just... the process. I can’t see those wrong bits, but I know they’re there. And I know the editors will find them, and in a couple of months time I’ll be carving this up again.

And that’s cool, that’s the process. That’s how this works. That’s what I need, outside eyes, to make this book everything I want it to be.

It’s a very weird feeling, is all I’m saying. Handing something in that you feel is done, even though you know full well it isn’t. But it’s done as far as you can do it, and waiting to hear how done you’ve done it is what does you in.

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THE WEEK OF SKETCHING HAS COME TO AN END. It has felt luxurious and frustrating in equal measure. On the whole, however, it has been wonderful for the book - giving myself space to flesh ideas out like this is something I should do more of. I’ve worked on both characters and surroundings, finding the shapes I want, and all the tiny variations I can pepper them with. Not only that, but drawing these things out on paper has shown me what they look like. Which is perhaps a weird thing to say, but often when you’re writing a description, you’re trying to pick out the bits you can focus on from a vague crackling cloud of a notion. By seeing how your brain fills the gaps on a blank page, it adds a ton more information. Stuff I can go back into the text with.

So it has been great, and I feel really excited to go back into this latest draft of the text and wrestle it into shape. 

As for the drawings themselves, they’re only intended as roughs, for my own benefit. It was suggested to me yesterday that I could use them for finished artwork, that pencil drawings bring a different quality to them. I agree, I love pencil drawings, they have a unique spontaneity, but I really don’t know if I could do many more of these. Pencils require a lot more thinking, and a lotttt more time, and it’s far easier to burn out. So, I guess we’ll see. It would be nice to experiment and compare a few different approaches. 

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I’VE WRITTEN THIS BOOK FROM SCRATCH FOUR TIMES (SO FAR)

Although having spoken to other authors, this isn’t uncommon. Which is both a relief and terrifying.

Flember book one is just over 20,000 words long (plus illustrations). Not a long novel by any means, but shrinking it down to that length has been a lonnnnng process. So, I thought you might be interested in the four incarnations of it:

VERSION 1

About 6 years ago I took some time out to write a book. The writing process was very quick, I had planned it all in my head already, and by the end I’d produced 60,000 words.

My agent said it needed a fair bit of work. There was too much going on, not enough focus, and I would concede my writing wasn’t up to scratch. She suggested I work with an editor she knew, who really helped me batter it into shape. After a few revised versions, I sent it back to my agent, who then sent it out to publishers.

The response was mixed. Most said there was a lot they liked, but that it wasn’t for them (if a publisher’s being nice about your work but ultimately saying no, I guess that’s just politeness?). It was disheartening, of course, I felt like I’d put a lot of work into getting this right, and it was all for nowt.

One publisher however, David Fickling, called me into his office. I’ve known David for a long time, and he’s known Flember for a long time. He knew it when it was a comic book I was pitching around, long before the novel came into being. In our meeting, he raised a few familiar points - that I still wasn’t keeping focus, that I was rushing through the story - and suggested I rework the book to be smaller. 20,000 words, for example.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I could hone in on what I loved about the story, and not rush around it.

VERSION 2

No one wants to scrap a 60,000 word manuscript, but that’s what I did, and over Christmas 2014 I rewrote it from scratch. It was essentially the same story, same characters, same happenings. But I had been rethinking the order of things a lot, and could add new details, clearer motivations. And crucially, I was determined to take my time. Explore the things I was talking about, build the world in pieces. I liked how it looked now, but I wanted to get my editor on it before I started pitching it again.

She suggested some changes to the direction, I’d lost my way from what made the first version work. This book was 30,000 words, and yet still felt rushed. And not quite right.

Reading it back, I agreed. So, I scrapped this one too.

VERSION 3

I’ll be honest, it beats you down a little having to start it all over again, again. That said, there was a part of me which still found it exciting. The chance to retell the story, but even better. To get it right. So I tried again, trying to keep everything simpler. Not crowd too many ideas in. Not assume the reader would know what I did. Kept it to 20,000 words. A clear origins story, interesting enough to be a springboard to a series of books.

After another round of edits with my editor, I sent it directly to David. He phoned me the next day, and said “You’ve cracked it”. I was over the moon.

Once the contracts had been sorted out with my agent, he called me in again, this time for a creative meeting. The first creative meeting! I sat around a table with David and his editorial team, and we talked for hours about what the book needed, how I wanted it to look, and so on. They each raised a few queries about aspects of the book, suggested ways I could round off the characters, settle a few ambiguous points. It was all great advice, and very doable. I sat on the train home, keen to dive back into Flember version 3 and carve it into a tighter shape.

VERSION 4

The problem with little changes is that they often snowball. Making a character slightly weaker, for example, then changes their role in later events, or puts them in scenarios which affect later outcomes. Basically, the more I thought about these tweaks, the more I realised I needed to rethink all the threads running through the book. It didn’t necessarily mean a whole rewrite, just redoing a few chapters, and tightening the rest.

As it happens, no, I’m pretty much rewriting it. And that makes me panic a little, sure. Version 3 was the book they liked, so I don’t want to undo all that good work. But at the same time, there is much I can improve. I did send David a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of this new version before I started, and he liked it, so I’m optimistic.

I’m in the middle of it now. It’s taking forever. My hope to grab the chunks that worked from version 3 hasn’t panned out, many parts of it just don’t apply anymore. So I’m just going to carry on, write this book for the fourth time, and nervously hand it back.

I think the story is so much stronger now. Through all four versions I’ve learnt, I’ve grown, and I feel more able to craft this world. I know this place inside and out now, I know who’s who, and where they are, and why they are. Things I didn’t necessarily know when I first started. So I’m grateful for how this has pushed me along, despite being sad to have lost whole books worth of material. This is how it works I guess. This is chipping away at the lump of rock to carve a statue. At four different lumps of rock.

Wish me luck.