This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
In the next part of our series, author Sophia Tobin talks about the process from her perspective, as she looks forward to receiving her proof copies.
We're
getting close to the day when I will see the proofs of The Silversmith's Wife, and hold the book for the first time. In a way, it feels like that moment will
break the book's connection with me – it will become its own entity. Since the
day it was introduced to its professional family – my agent, my editor Clare,
and the other people who have worked so hard on it – I have learnt to see it
not just as mine but through the eyes of others too. It's a privilege, but it's also a big
contrast to how I thought of the book at first.
As a book which has murder at its heart, but which is also a love story, I've never been that keen on labelling The Silversmith's Wife. However, one label I'm very happy with is historical fiction. Through all its changes – from my first hurried notes to the very last line edits – it has always been sure of its time and place: eighteenth century London. For me the past is a vivid, disquieting, but always exciting place to visit.
As I began the book, I was just writing for myself. I had one first 'go' at the story without reading it back at any point. I wanted to find out what the plot was without scuppering myself with self-doubt (I had no idea who had committed the murder). I hesitate to call it a first draft – it was nowhere near as polished as that – but it was 40,000 words, and it gave me the backbone of my plot and a few surprises. For example, Digby, the nightwatchman who is one of my main characters, was meant to appear for only two or three pages. But once he'd turned up, he had no intention of going anywhere, and stood around looking at his fingernails until I included him in the plot.
As I worked on my next draft, I put a lot of time into research, and the things I found inspired, delighted and occasionally worried me (historians don't all agree). I find it particularly hard to accept Bernard Cornwell's soothing advice to historical novelists that you will always get something wrong. This doesn't stop me from, even now, obsessively checking facts. When I found myself tweeting about eighteenth century parish boundaries a few weeks ago, I wondered whether I'd gone too far.
But the main reason that I wrote my piece of historical fiction is that the characters were there, waiting for me. They were standing on the Mayfair streets as the moon rose on a winter's night in 1792, and that was where they belonged. I wrote it because I cared for them, and for their story. This is why I am nervous about seeing the cover and the proofs for the first time. When I hold the proof, it will mean that I have ended my conversation with my characters. Our world, which shimmered and changed in different lights and seasons, will be fixed on the page – waiting for others to read it.