Difficult Second Novel

(And a chance to be an ARC reader for the first, less difficult novel...)

Hi, I’m Amber Eve — author of smalltown romantic comedies, and my long-running blog, Forever Amber. If you’d like to know more about me, start here. If you’d like to hear more from me, meanwhile, hit the button below…

First up! ARCs of Highland Getaway are now available on Netgalley, so if you’d like to be one of the first to read my debut traditionally published novel, and are willing to write a review in exchange for it, please head over there to sign up!

Second up: book number 10!

Which, in traditional publishing terms, is book number 2, it being the second book which will be published as part of my contract with Black & White…

… but which, in real terms, is the very first book I’ve written under contract with a publisher, all of the previous ones (including Highland Getaway) being written with the intention of self-publishing them.

Are you following all of this?

Writing a book under contract is, it turns out, very different from writing a book for yourself … which is, I think, why this book is proving to be so much harder to write than anything I’ve done before. It’s making me feel like an absolute rookie, actually: it’s like all of those other books just don’t exist any more, and this is my very first rodeo — which, of course, is bringing up a whole lot of impostor syndrome-y thoughts and other acts of relentless over-thinking.

I know! Who would’ve thought that getting a book deal would make me anxious? Me! The most laid-back, relaxed person you ever … oh. Right. Yeah.

And it’s not that I didn’t care about the quality of my self-published books, obviously. I don’t know … I think it’s just that, when I was writing as in indie, it felt like there was much less pressure, somehow. My deadlines were all self-imposed. If I didn’t have the book ready by the pre-order date, nothing much would happen. And if I got to the end of the first draft, and decided I hated it, there was really nothing stopping me just binning it and starting again with something else.

I never actually did any of these things, you understand. Even when my deadlines are self-imposed, I am far too uptight to allow myself to miss them. But the fact remains, I could have done them, if I’d really wanted to.

Now, though, things are different; and although the deadline for this next book is still reassuringly far away (One of the reasons I was so keen to take this deal was the fact that being trad published will — hopefully — give me more time to work on each book), it’s not so far away that I’m going to be able to just endlessly re-write it… or, indeed, bin it and come up with something different.

It’s not just that that’s making it difficult, though. It’s also the awareness that someone else is going to have to read this book and approve it before it can be published that’s freaking me out a little. I feel like my writing is much more self-conscious than it usually is; as if someone’s always looking over my shoulder (they’re not), so I’m constantly thinking, “God, I wonder what they’ll think of this? What if they hate it, though? I bet they’ll hate it…” And then I have to stop myself re-writing it 15 times to address some completely imaginary criticism that may or may not even be made.

It seems wild to say it now, but, with my other books, I didn’t really think about them like that. I just kind of dove in and started telling the story. Now, though, I’ll be typing away quite happily, and then I’ll be like, “Wait: what’s my character’s misbelief? Does she even have one? Should I give her one?” And then the whole process is delayed while I try to figure out if my book is meeting some ‘rule’ of good fiction writing which I have just that second read about — generally here on Substack, it has to be said.

I should probably add here that all of this pressure I’m feeling to make this book pErFeCt exists purely in my head. I mean, I’m sure my editor would love for the book to be perfect too, obviously, but no one has said the first draft has to be, or that they’ll dump me if it isn’t. All the same, though, that’s what my mind is desperately trying to tell me. That they’ll hate it. That the first book they bought was just a fluke, and I will never be able to pull it off again. And so on, and so forth, down the apparently endless downward spiral of self-doubt and overthinking that has come to characterize this journey.

And always the thought remains: am I really just over-thinking everything, and allowing myself to be paralyzed by the knowledge that bona-fide publishing professionals are going to read this book… or is it actually shit?

That, reader, is the question that has occupied my mind this week as I’ve attempted to juggle promoting book 1 with drafting book 2, and also taking long walks on the moor which are ostensibly for the purpose of thinking about the plot, but which have, in reality been mostly spent listening to Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights on repeat while pretending to be Cathy.

(No, I haven’t seen the movie. I did once write a dissertation on the book, though, so I suspect I’ll have a lot of feelings about it when I do…)

When I signed my publishing contract, my agent warned me that although I obviously have a track record as an indie author, this book (Highland Getaway) would, to all intents and purposes, be treated as a debut novel, and it has very much felt like that. So I guess the crux of the matter is that I feel that I have a lot to prove right now, and a lot riding, not only on the success of book ‘1’, but on my ability to make book ‘2’ even better.

So, absolutely no pressure, then…

Thanks for reading!