An introduction to my books and how I write

I am now working on three novels simultaneously, completing a third draft of ‘The Edenists’, a first draft of ‘Letters’ and tearing up and completely rewriting ‘The SInger’ which also has the more fun working title of ‘Sexy Romp’ (!) - just to remind me what I am aiming for! Surprisingly, this is not as hard as I thought it might be and what seems to be helping me most is a very clear routine and support from my writers’ groups.

This is how it seems to be working for me. Every day, I write ‘Letters’ for at least twenty minutes around my work schedule and on one day a week I write for at least an hour. One afternoon a week, I spend a couple of hours editing ‘The Edenists’ and ‘The Singer’. This way each novel is kept constantly in my mind and I always feel connected to all of them. And as soon as there is a gap, I’ll return to ‘The Liberation of Gerard Miller’ or to my hibernating crime novel ‘Organs’ or to the sequels to ‘The Edenists’ and ‘The SInger’. Or begin something completely new of course, maybe a modern novel that is currently beginning to take shape in my mind.

Most of my novels have similar themes, queerness in history and how people can find their way through it to live the lives they want with the people they want to be with, self fulfilment, questing for a better life, dealing with what might seem like unsurmountable challenges with grace and determination, learning painful but necessary lessons about the world and about ourselves and maybe those touchstones also help me keep so many novelistic plates spinning at once.

And so do my writing friends and my tutors past and present, and I’d really like to shout out to all of them and say thank you for all the support and inspiration and tough love that you give.

I keep going. It’s what I do. It’s what I need to do.

Some of my writing friends:

https://duncanillingwrites.substack.com/

www.susanthomson.co.uk.