First off, I apologise for using such a clickbaity headline. A more accurate title would be “My problems with male characters… and starting again.” And in fact, it should be the other way round, because this is a two part post and the men bit doesn’t really come until the second installment. But… if you’re reading this, then the trick worked… ha ha, you fools!… I mean thank you, dear reader for indulging me.

Let me begin.

Last week, I hit forty thousand words of the first draft of a novel, which has the working title Who Killed Roger Toomey? That follows the twenty two thousand words of another story, Sleepers, that I wrote at the start of the year, before abandoning it, and the fifty thousand words I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November, which I haven’t so much as looked at since then. So, as I’m not exactly a prolific blogger, but I’m writing this, the big question is: have I abandoned the third novel in a row?

I recently saw a successful debut author tweeting that they had deleted something like twenty thousand words of the first draft of their next book.  And I’ve seen other authors talking about doing the same thing. The experience seems to be traumatic but cathartic, with writers emerging from it hopeful that the new words will be superior to the deleted ones.

Have I been holding down my delete key while tears stream down my cheeks?
In a word, no.

Writers put themselves under a lot of pressure. And, as with so many things, modern life makes this situation tougher. Every week, I see social media posts from prolific authors who are publishing their second, third or even fourth novel in a year. I see posts from people who have hit a bestseller list or been nominated for an award. And there are debut authors who were totally unknown a few months ago and are now receiving praise from the Stephen Kings and Lee Childs of this world. It’s natural to want a piece of that.

I planned to write and rewrite a novel that would be ready for people to read by the end of the year. And yet here I am at the end of April and I know for a fact that neither Who Killed Roger Toomey? nor Sleepers nor the NaNoWriMo story will ever be published in anything like their current state.

But I certainly haven’t deleted those stories while sobbing like a baby and pouring myself a glass of Pinot Gringo (admittedly that’s partly because I don’t really drink wine – I’m a lager swilling double hard bastard).

Who Killed Roger Toomey? is essentially a cozy(ish) murder mystery in which jovial detective Bob Knox investigates the murder of famous writer Roger Toomey. Which is weird, because I don’t really enjoy that type of book. I tend to prefer gritty crime fiction. Now, Sleepers was more along those lines, a serial killer story set in a corrupt town.  And the NaNoWriMo book was about a man who regained consciousness at a grisly crime scene and had to work out what he was doing there.

But there was a running theme in those stories: they were all driven by male characters. Toomey features a male detective investigating the murder of a man and delving into his past. Sleepers does have an interesting female character, but she emerges late in the story. The NaNoWriMo novel featured a female psychological profiler, but the narrative was driven by the man who may or may not be a murderer.

All these stories had things going for them. But I didn’t obsess over them. And none of the characters took over my brain in the way that Sarah Silver from PsychoAnalysis did.

And then, last week, a thought popped into my head: what if jovial detective Bob Knox became detective Kerry Knox, a woman with a violent past? And what if the story ceased to be cozy but featured a female detective up against men who want to humiliate and kill her?

And even better than that, Kerry would fit perfectly into Sleepers (book two!). Previously, I had to kill the male detective’s wife and make him a single parent, a clichéd way to create sympathy for him. But Kerry will be a woman taking on powerful men, a much more interesting dynamic.

So I won’t be deleting the hundred and ten thousand words I’ve written in the past few months. I’ll be rewriting what I’ve got, using some of the scenes and characters and basic story line of Who Killed Roger Toomey? but also making some big changes.

Some people would probably be frustrated with this situation, having ‘wasted’ months writing things that will never see print. But I’ve learned a lot while producing all those words. Sometimes you have to find out what doesn’t work before you can create something that does. And one thing I’ve discovered about myself is that I need to write dark stories with strong female characters. That leads me nicely on to part 2, which discusses this very topic and will be published soon…