The Summer House in Santorini by Samantha Parks
The
Most Surprising Things About Writing a Novel, by Samantha Parks
Nobody ever told me
writing a novel would be easy. Let’s get that out of the way.
Writing may be romanticised quite a bit in pop culture, but I had no
reason to be deluded about the fact that it would be HARD. So when I
started writing, editing and marketing my own book, it wasn’t the
FACT that it was challenging that surprised me. Rather, it was the
WAYS in which it was challenging which caught me off guard. Here are
some of the things that surprised me:
Creative
curiosity dissipates as soon as the first draft is done.
Imagine
this: you spend months of your life labouring over a story, stringing
together loose ends and fleshing out sub-plots, until one refreshing
day when you finally get to write those magical words: THE END.
Except
that isn’t
the end. You have to keep going back to that story over and over. To
change characters. Change the setting. Sometimes even change major
plot points. But the problem is that the creative curiosity that was
driving you through the writing process is done? That’s gone. It
went away the second you tied the bow on the story.
Structural
edits really are that bad, but proofreading is a bit of a nightmare,
too.
Everyone
talks about how bad the structural edits are, mostly for the reason I
mentioned above, at least in my case. But the proofread was
surprisingly my most frustrating stage of edits.
The
thing is, I’m a very technically proficient writer. My undergrad
degree is in technical writing, so I know my way around a semicolon.
But I also break grammar rules on purpose sometimes because it makes
prose more engaging. I did it twice in that last sentence, in fact.
When
the proofread comes back, you want to just be able to click “accept
all changes” and move on. But when most of the edits make your
writing harder to read, you have to go through the entire 65,000-word
manuscript and manually accept or reject each comma placement and
dash edit. It was exhausting, and I wasn’t even remotely prepared
for it.
There
are so many other books being published at the same time and about
the same thing.
Did
you know there’s another chick lit novel being published in the UK
this summer with the word “Santorini” in the title? Honestly, it
can be overwhelming seeing how many other books are coming out around
the same time. But the brilliant thing about the women’s fiction
community is that all of the readers and authors and bloggers are so
supportive of everyone, and no one feels left out or unloved. It’s
been an incredible thing to experience and a pleasant surprise in my
journey.
I
am so, so privileged to have been able to share my debut novel with
everyone, and I can’t wait to see everyone’s reactions. There
have been surprises along the way, both good and bad, but the biggest
surprise has been how much love and support I have felt from every
one of you. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. And if you
haven’t already, grab your copy of The Summer House in Santorini
for just 99p/$2.99 wherever you buy your ebooks.
One
summer in Greece will change everything…
Anna’s
running away. From a failed relationship, a dead-end career and a
complicated family life.
On
the island of Santorini, with its picturesque villas, blue-tiled
roofs, and the turquoise waters of the Aegean lapping at the
white sand beaches, Anna inherits a less-than-picturesque summer
house from her estranged father. As she rebuilds the house, she
rebuilds her life, uncovering family secrets along the way that
change everything. She starts to fall for her little slice of
paradise, as well as for gorgeous, charming Nikos.
Will Anna lose her heart in more ways than one?
Will Anna lose her heart in more ways than one?
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/samanthajgale
Website/blog:
https://www.samanthaparks.com/
