New Year, 2006

A tricky stage in the process has been successfully negotiated – both my editors in the UK and the US like the manuscript of The Second Wife (to be published as Wives Behaving Badly in the US ) and together we have dealt with the editing. This is both exhilarating and painful. Submission of a manuscript is just that – submission. Most authors accept that, however they have striven to make the novel perfect, there are always things to be done but the editorial critique can stir up in the author fierce and mixed feelings. Sometimes, battles rage. Almost always, some kind of horse-trading commences. Sometimes, if the verdict is negative then a period of prolonged and painful re-thinking has to be undertaken. Yet, when an editor seizes your work by the scruff of the neck and shakes it things happen and a better book emerges. The editor-author is a symbiotic relationship and if you are lucky to have a good and gifted editor, then you are pushed to produce your best. What more could you wish?


This time, the book jacket has gone through without a hitch (please see home page). Jackets are another flashpoint. They are absolutely crucial to the selling process and publishers have to establish their priorities. Authors don’t always understand the market place (why should they?) so they complain frequently about the image, the colour, the size of their title or their name. But I am delighted with mine. I took one look at it, and it spoke to me instantly. It is lovely to look at. It sums up the book and, to me, it suggests a complexity that I hope is in the story.

This period between finishing a novel and publication is a rather curious, strange time of suspended animation. The book has neither risen nor fallen. It is has not been judged as yet – however, I would like to point out here that authors are often their own toughest critics! I can still think about it within my own terms. It is private, and unborn. That will soon change.

But as the weeks progress towards the summer publication, I will gradually let go of it in order to allow a new idea to take root for the next novel. I have learnt not to hurry this process. It certainly cannot happen to order. I will still mull over The Second Wife but with less urgency knowing that it will leave space for the seed of the new novel to germinate and to grow.

© Elizabeth Buchan