Today I reopened my computer to begin the twenty-third manuscript revision I’ve been living with for a decade. I clicked ‘File / Save As’ and typed over V22 to be V23 with the date at the end. It’s how I save my documents, reminding me of how many iterations a manuscript has. How much love and grit has gone into it. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written, rewritten and deleted.
This story has been part of my life for a decade, more. I began writing it because Ann, the woman my main character is inspired by, would not stop talking to me, begging me to write her story so that she wasn’t just a statistic, a note in history. I’ve lived with these characters longer than some friendships. I’ve celebrated with them, argued with them, cried over them and, more than once, wondered whether it was finally time to let them go. But they keep calling me back.
Over those ten years, life hasn’t stood still. My kids have grown into men. I’ve left a job and started my business. We’ve renovated, travelled, lost loved ones, gained loved ones. My writing hasn’t stood still either. I’ve written other manuscripts. Started new stories. Finished others. Had stories published. Had stories rejected. I’ve learnt more about the craft and grown as both a writer and a person.
Those new stories call to me too, but writing isn’t about putting all your eggs in one basket, waiting for one book to define you. It’s about continuing to create, continuing to learn, continuing to trust the stories that ask to be told.
This one just happens to have stayed with me the longest.
Over the years, this manuscript Un|Common Thread has had many different titles, has been shortlisted and longlisted in competitions. It’s attracted interest from agents and publishers. It’s given me residencies. Again and again, people have told me how deeply the story resonates with them.
As writers, those moments matter, not because they promise publication, because they don’t. They matter because they remind us that the story is connecting with readers. Sometimes, when the doubts creep in, they remind us that we really are writers. They’re the ‘shot-in-the-arm’ for writers.
When you’ve spent this long with a manuscript, you inevitably begin to wonder why it hasn’t quite crossed the finish line.
I nearly didn’t start again.
When I had feedback from a publisher about it, saying that she’d look at it again if I revised it, I felt the weight of knowing what it takes to revise. Did I have it in me? Could I do it again?
I haven’t worked on this story for nearly three years now and the two newer stories are the two newer stories shimmer with possibility. They’re fresh, exciting and eager for my attention, calling me away from this older one. This one has a wisdom to it, a message that I think will withstand time. It’s the one story that I feel most fondly of, maybe because I began it just after my mum died. But still, when I got that email I wondered if I could do more work on it or whether I’d destroy it.
Then I woke abruptly in the night chiding myself for even thinking about putting a lid on that box of versions and letting this story rest. Of course I would go back in. I had to.
I owe it to Ann, to this story.
The feedback was slightly ambiguous, so I reached out to a few trusted writer friends and a manuscript assessor who had provided feedback on this story about six drafts ago. While I’m still to meet with one friend, the feedback is all pointing to similar things and it is mostly around a newer voice that I have threaded through the story.
The manuscript assessor offered generous, thoughtful feedback. She could see what I’d only begun to suspect myself. The newer thread I’d woven through the manuscript wasn’t the side note I’d made it. It wanted to become part of the heart of the story. It needed more connective tissue. More space. More courage from me.
This morning, I woke early and crept down the hall, lit my writerly candle, turned on the heater, made a coffee and sat with my notebook and made some notes. My hand was itching to open the document, but I had Julia Cameron’s wisdom in my mind and chose to journal a few pages first. This helped me to clarify what I needed to start with rather than all the work I have to do.
Writing is not a race
If there’s one thing these ten years have taught me, it’s that stories have their own timelines. We don’t need to rush them. We simply have to keep showing up for them. We get to write them, stay with them, make them the best that they can be.
This manuscript has taught me patience. It has taught me resilience. It has taught me to listen more carefully than I ever imagined possible. Most of all, it has taught me that loving a story means being willing to ask more of yourself on its behalf. To stretch myself and do the work.
There are many easier things I could be doing than revising this manuscript for the twenty-third time. But this story is still asking questions I don’t yet know how to answer.
I want to know where those questions lead.
So here goes.
Version 23.
Another act of faith.