Writers unite

News from the coalface

Over the weekend, I finished the first revision of The Gamekeeper’s House from the first draft that I wrote with such haste in December and January. Now I know I moan about Substack, or rather about the abuse of Substack by the grifters and phoney fakers who fill it with their spam, but it is still a great place to meet other writers, and it is thanks to other writers that I was able to dive into GH and know what I needed to do.

One such writer came back with two pages of comments, good and bad, such as:

“Now the ending.

It was okay, but I felt a little let down, no, more dissatisfied really. As if I had been denied something of value within the story.”

He then went on to not only explain what was missing, but even where I could prime the reader for the ending it needed, a couple of chapters earlier.

I knew when I wrapped up the first draft of GH that the ending was unfinished, but to have somebody else give their take on it before I went in months later to give it its first tweak was so useful. I knew roughly in my head what I needed to do, but just having that help made a massive difference, in confidence that I was doing the right thing, and in structure by pointing out what I had left unsaid, or rather, unwritten.

So I suppose my point, while I take a break from writing to check out Substack for ten minutes, is to not be afraid to share your stuff with other writers. They do not even have to be writers the same as you. I write ghost stories, he writes historical fiction, but we just get on, and bounce each other’s work between us for comments we know will be honest and useful, good and bad.

Back to work I go. I now know what to do with the nine-year-old girl upstairs who is having a proper sulk because everybody calls her a liar, and what she is likely to say when she comes downstairs for pizza, so these little breaks on Substack are useful too.

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