It’s nearly a month since I lovingly printed my first manuscript to send it out into the world by its little ol’ self. For a couple of weeks I didn’t think about it at all, but confusingly, since I got properly started on my second novel, ideas for changing the first one keep popping into my head at those usual creative moments (just after I wake up, and when I’m in the shower).

A good friend also read the entire thing – despite my usual preference for only allowing strangers to read it – and gave me a collection of exceedingly useful feedback which in turn sparked a few more ideas for amendments.

This weekend I’m planning to take a good look at this and try and start writing some “new bits” that will round out the story better. Half of me wonders if this is merely a procrastination technique to avoid getting stuck into the second novel; the half wonders if I should just really put aside the first novel for a much longer time, in essence “forget” about it until I’m more experienced with this whole fiction writing gig.

But who am I to wonder: I’m just going to get writing and be glad that I’m writing something. Over-analysis not required! The new bits I’m considering are actually inserting a kind of parallel storyline from the point of view of another character – perhaps the inspiration to do this (or the belief that I could pull it off) came from starting off my new novel using different characters’ viewpoints, and discovering it was a lot of fun.  I guess my point is that fiction writing is a lot about practicing and trying and slowly, slowly improving over time – so the more practice I get, the better.