A Milestone

Sometime in the dim interregnum between Thursday night and Friday morning, I submitted the final copy edits of White Feathers to my editor. Thus ended an intense four-month period of rewriting, substantive edits and tweaking. As if the gods had planned it, just as I approached the end of this period, I was offered and accepted a new job and completed the last two nights of editing while heading out to work in the mornings. And as I begin this job, sort out my finances and resume the rest of my life, I realise that while the journey towards publication continues, an important milestone has been reached: after three and a half years and five drafts, my work on this novel is over.

It seems a very long time since that time in October 2010 I sat down and started writing 30,000 rambling words which, with the support of the online writing group I subscribe to, just kept going and going. During that time I have worked two jobs, welcomed a marriage and new arrival in my immediate family circle, mourned the passing of an online friend, travelled the battlefields I mention in the story, walked 32km overnight over six Wicklow hills on solstice night, have sung with a choir in the Rathaus in Vienna and curated a short story contest. Lesson learned – if I am going to make a habit of this novel-writing lark, I’m going to have to speed the hell up. Three and a half years is too long! And I have a few first drafts waiting…

This first novel will probably be a bit different from the rest, because it isn’t just the novel itself – it is the entire spiritual journey caught up with it. The act of seeing it through, from an incoherent Draft 1 to the finished manuscript I just sent. Deep in my heart, I felt this story was different. Emotionally, it pulled me in. Sometimes I wonder was I so involved that it was not healthy, but I have the sort of personality that I needed to be 100 per cent involved, to the point of obsession. I needed to walk every mile until I reached my Jerusalem.