Paul Whybrow
Full Member
It's a common piece of advice, for a writer to set their manuscript aside for a while after typing The End. There must be millions of novels forever lost in the mythical bottom drawer. These days, neglected treasures take up hard disk space, hidden in a folder.
There are excellent reasons for taking a break from working on a story that's occupied months or years of your life, dominating your every waking moment. The main one is that it's hard to be objective about your own work and having a distance reveals the shape of the wood that was previously concealed by having your nose pressed to the trunk of your tree.
There have been many famous works of literature rescued from the bottom drawer. Perhaps the best-known are the poems of Emily Dickinson, 1,800 of which were discovered by her younger sister in a locked chest.
Franz Kafka's The Trial was written, but not finished, ten years before his death in 1924. Executors of his estate ignored his request that his work be destroyed, which led to the publication of his novel and the word Kafkaesque entering the language. Stieg Larsson's The Millennium Series of novels were published posthumously, leading to rancour between his family and life partner.
E.M. Forster's novel Maurice stayed in the bottom drawer (no pun intended
) until a year after his death in 1970, owing to its plot involving homosexuality. Attitudes and the law had changed by then, making it more acceptable.
I've been revisiting my own bottom drawer in the last few weeks. In preparation for writing the fifth novel in my Cornish Detective series, I've re-read the first four titles to remind myself of recurring characters and the story arc of my protagonist detective. I haven't read them simply as stories for many months, and, sure enough, I was sidetracked into editing as I went along—despite thinking that they were done and dusted. This is why famous novelists never re-read their successful books!
To my surprise, I found that I hadn't read The Perfect Murderer for 27 months (my LibreOffice writing software stores the dates).
Such an interval has made the reading experience feel more like enjoying a story written by a stranger, helping me to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the plot. Inevitably, I've been editing, for I noticed inconsistency in my use of en and em dashes (ain't life fun?). Such line editing is a thankless task, and I don't know how professional editors do it day in day out. I've worked for seven hours on the manuscript, for the last three days, but should be finished by the weekend. Last night, I started to feel like sleepy bunny, as my brain switched itself off!
What do you have in your bottom drawer?
Are there any lost masterpieces worthy of further attention?
Or, embarrassing failures that you really don't want to talk about?
There are excellent reasons for taking a break from working on a story that's occupied months or years of your life, dominating your every waking moment. The main one is that it's hard to be objective about your own work and having a distance reveals the shape of the wood that was previously concealed by having your nose pressed to the trunk of your tree.
There have been many famous works of literature rescued from the bottom drawer. Perhaps the best-known are the poems of Emily Dickinson, 1,800 of which were discovered by her younger sister in a locked chest.
Franz Kafka's The Trial was written, but not finished, ten years before his death in 1924. Executors of his estate ignored his request that his work be destroyed, which led to the publication of his novel and the word Kafkaesque entering the language. Stieg Larsson's The Millennium Series of novels were published posthumously, leading to rancour between his family and life partner.
E.M. Forster's novel Maurice stayed in the bottom drawer (no pun intended
) until a year after his death in 1970, owing to its plot involving homosexuality. Attitudes and the law had changed by then, making it more acceptable.I've been revisiting my own bottom drawer in the last few weeks. In preparation for writing the fifth novel in my Cornish Detective series, I've re-read the first four titles to remind myself of recurring characters and the story arc of my protagonist detective. I haven't read them simply as stories for many months, and, sure enough, I was sidetracked into editing as I went along—despite thinking that they were done and dusted. This is why famous novelists never re-read their successful books!
To my surprise, I found that I hadn't read The Perfect Murderer for 27 months (my LibreOffice writing software stores the dates).
Such an interval has made the reading experience feel more like enjoying a story written by a stranger, helping me to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the plot. Inevitably, I've been editing, for I noticed inconsistency in my use of en and em dashes (ain't life fun?). Such line editing is a thankless task, and I don't know how professional editors do it day in day out. I've worked for seven hours on the manuscript, for the last three days, but should be finished by the weekend. Last night, I started to feel like sleepy bunny, as my brain switched itself off!
What do you have in your bottom drawer?
Are there any lost masterpieces worthy of further attention?
Or, embarrassing failures that you really don't want to talk about?
