One of the most frequent questions I have been asked about writing Room 706 is ‘how many edits/drafts did your book go through?’ so I thought I would try to answer that here.

The short answer is six. Three with my agent and three with my editors. I have no idea what constitutes ‘normal’ or how this compares to others.

And here’s the long answer:

I know some writers spend so much time on their book plan that when it comes to actually writing the book everything is already in the right place. I am not like that. I start with a word document, put anything that occurs to me on it, then spent lots of time cutting and pasting and restructuring and making notes to myself to add things here and explain things there. That is, I may have a big document of many tens of thousands of words, but initially it’s not the right words and certainly not the right order.

So by going over this many times and constantly rearranging the document, the text starts to take on form, and during this time I go back over my work, changing words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. I don’t really see this process of constant revision as editing, just as writing.

Once Room 706 (which was called something else at this time) resembled a novel and had some kind of logical structure, and I was happy that it contained everything I wanted it to contain and made some kind of chronological sense, I sent it to some friends who were my ‘beta-readers’, and after incorporating some of their comments, that’s what I sent to agents when they requested the manuscript from my initial submission package. That was the first draft.

Once I had signed with my agent, she spent time putting together her comments on the version I had sent her. This was the first proper external edit and it was a big one – huge structural changes that basically took my draft from one timeline peppered with explanatory memories of how my characters got where they got, to three separate timelines that change from chapter to chapter. The difference between the first draft and the second draft were the biggest changes in the whole process, with the restructure, an altered ending, and much more of a sense of place. The version I sent back to her was the second draft.

My agent and her assistant then did another round of suggestions, this time focussing on filling out the emotional holes where my characters needed some further rounding out. I sent a new version back and we then went backwards and forwards for a few weeks looking at specific suggestions or chapters or lines where my agent and her team thought there could be improvements. I see all of these changes together as making my third draft, which is what then went on submission (when an agent sends the book to publishers).

My publishing deals in the UK and US came at roughly the same time, so the editors from both of those countries worked together to give me notes for my next draft. Though there were plenty of comments, it was nothing near as much as the first structural edit from my agent, and mainly focussed on expanding some of the characters in order to add depth as well as adding some scenes to add to feelings that already existed, such as increasing the sense of fear or the intensity of relationships. Implementing these suggestions led to my fourth draft.

I then had another two rounds of back and forth with my editors. These focussed on stylistic changes – making sure everything flowed and was consistent. Whether readers can tell who is speaking from their patterns of speech, for example. Also, having had time to sit with previous suggestions, I then decided to incorporate some of these that I had initially rejected (and not include some that I had agreed to try out). This was draft five and draft six. At each of these stages there were also versions that went back and forth with tweaks, but I don’t count these as new drafts. And at one of the late drafts a whole new chapter was added, while another that I had rewritten in response to editorial comments was ditched and we reverted to a version of the original.

There were of course further small changes at copyedit stage, and proof stage, but nothing major. So if we’re counting actual drafts I think there have been six.

You can actually pre-order Room 706 already – and please do. But just to note the sales pages currently have a ‘holding cover’ so that’s not the one you will get in due course. I will write shortly about just why pre-orders matter and why authors beg you to buy their books in advance. 

PREORDER

Here from Waterstones

Here from Amazon