So here we are, suddenly, in April and The Tenth Gift is out in paperback in England and here I am, still in Morocco. It seems strange that my novel is out there without me, winking at people in bookshops, going home with strangers. Still, I hope that those of you who have bought and read it and come to visit here will feel more like friends than strangers now.
It's been an odd sort of month. I spent much of it on tenterhooks (not that I've been stretching any woollen cloth recently) awaiting responses to the first draft of The Salt Road. Goodness, but they've been a mixed bunch! They range from the ecstatic and emotionally bowled over to the actively hostile, thus proving the old saw, that one man's meat is another man's poison. It's the first time I've written anything that has so divided opinion, and it's really made me think about the nature of fiction, and just how subjective is the reading experience. Harold Bloom, the American literary critic and theorist once claimed that 'every reading is a misreading': meaning that there is no true reading of a text, not even the author's own intended text; that everyone makes their own version as they read a book - particularly a novel - which requires so much imaginative input from its readers (which is why a good novel is so satisfying).
And the truly terrifying thing is just how mutable and elastic a text can be, no matter how 'finished' a writer thinks it is. Asked by my editor at Viking for a number of revisions - some to do with character, some with pacing - I have been carving out the second draft and finding that a single small change in chapter 3 can have catastrophic consequences in chapter twelve, and beyond. Characters shapeshift, turning from monsters to angels and back to monsters again; or somewhere in between. Tone shifts too, from brooding and sinister to sunny and uplifting, with just a few changes of adjective, a nip and tuck here and there. I am beginning to wonder what sort of book it will be at the end of this process and whether it will have lost something profound and essential as a result, or whether it will be strengthened by its trials. Will it even be mine by the end of all this? Does, in fact, any book actually belong to its author? The answer, I suspect, is no. We think we are in control of the creative process as we write, but I know how a story can spin and turn and bite unexpectedly, even when you think you have it pinned down like a trapped snake. And then, once the revisions are made and it is delivered out of your hands, it becomes the publisher's book for a while, and then the booksellers', and finally the readers'. So I hope that when eventually this beast is published you will read it and let me know how participating in the mystical process of making a story live was for you.
