{"id":80,"date":"2013-04-12T21:12:44","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T21:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2013-04-12T21:12:44","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T21:12:44","slug":"the-underground-mice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=80","title":{"rendered":"The Underground Mice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two nights ago I completed the first draft of the sequel to The Chimney Rabbit<\/em>, entitled The Chimney Rabbit and the Underground Mice<\/em>. They say that everyone has one novel in them – at least I know now that I’ve got more than one. After so many years of writing without ever coming close to completing a novel, despite many starts, it’s a relief to think that my first book wasn’t a one-off.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s not done yet. I’ve still got to read it over properly, then carry out at least two full drafts before I consider it even close to complete. But there’s no rush for that. With The Chimney Rabbit<\/em> still no closer to finding an agent than when I started three months ago, there’s no pressing need to get the sequel in publishable form. I think this is an advantage – it means I can leave the book in a metaphorical drawer so when I come back to it, I come back to it fresh. It’s very easy to be so close to your work that you miss the most glaring of errors.<\/p>\n

Writing The Underground Mice<\/em> went a lot more smoothly than with the first book.\u00a0 I started The Chimney Rabbit<\/em> in March 2012, but because I had an enormous hiatus after Easter that took up most of the summer, I didn’t complete the first draft until the start of December 2012.<\/p>\n

I’ve been much more disciplined in writing The Underground Mice<\/em>. I haven’t written every day – sometimes I’ve needed to take a couple of days off to take some long baths and ponder where the story was going – but while the total time spent at the keyboard writing was probably comparable to the first book, the elapsed time is much, much shorter: I started The Underground Mice<\/em> on the 14th of January 2013, and I’ve completed the first draft of 77,000 words within three months.<\/p>\n

So what’s next? I’ll do a read-through (Scrivener produces excellent ebook output, so I’ll read through the whole thing on my Kindle, phone, or tablet) then get a draft copy printed at Lulu.com<\/a>. This is so that my partner can read it – she’s a resolute Kindle refusenik, so it has to be a dead tree edition or she just can’t read it. I’m always amazed at the decent quality you can get from Lulu when printing a single paperback copy, complete with colour cover, for about \u00a37 delivered. It would probably cost me more in printer ink to print a copy on my own printer.<\/p>\n

Once I’ve done that, I think I’ll turn back to The Chimney Rabbit<\/em>. I learned a lot from writing the sequel, so I think it’s time to see if I can apply any of that to the first book. When I wrote Chapter One of The Chimney Rabbit<\/em>, I’d never completed a whole book – now I’ve completed two, so I’m sure there’s a lot I can do to improve it. Who knows? Maybe I can improve it enough to catch the eye of an agent.<\/p>\n

After that<\/em>, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve got some ideas for a third book in the series, but I’ve also got an idea for a stand-alone prequel, set in the same universe but several years before the events of the first book with a different cast of characters.<\/p>\n

I’ll just have to see which story grabs me and demands to be written next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two nights ago I completed the first draft of the sequel to The Chimney Rabbit, entitled The Chimney Rabbit and the Underground Mice. They say that everyone has one novel in them – at least I know now that I’ve got more than one. After so many years of writing without ever coming close to… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-1i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}