Last two weeks or so I’ve been running through the entire manuscript of Night Must Wait doing a stem to stern edit on it. I thought I’d done so many edits for that story, surely I could just sail through, plucking the occasional typo and feeling good. Well guess again. I ended up recrafting sentences, cutting, cutting and cutting, and sluicing out paragraphs. Even changed a character’s name! Finally hit send the day it was due and now I’m sitting here thinking about horror.
That might seem funny, but I mean it literally. I’m thinking about what makes good horror. What is it, what combination of the mundane, the specific, details like the silvery wrappers of toffee candy, or the chlorine pong from tap water, that brings a horror book to life? The next book I’m wrapping up is science fiction horror and I ‘ve had a great time drafting it. Now however, I’m in the early editing phase that involves lots of fresh writing and creation to flesh out the things I ran past on the first go. Fun, but I want my mind to be working the right way to get this one moving fast and sure.
Forget about catching my breath. Time to go scare myself.
One comment