Me, my novel and the proverbial "long weight"

It started in a grubby cinema seat in a grubby cinema in a grubby seaside town in 1970. I was a grubby eight-year-old boy and I sat open-mouthed in front of a sparkling Technicolour movie. Before my eyes the very stuff of British life and society were defended from tyranny by dashing, devil-may-care pilots riding in sleek, powerful fighter-planes. The film, The Battle of Britain, instilled a life-long fascination for the events of 1940, although my own ambition to one day become a Spitfire pilot was cruelly snatched away by the progress of aviation technology.

In my late teens I discovered one of The Few had grown up in my hometown and was buried in our local graveyard. There seemed to be only a basic awareness of this fact in the town, especially (as I was told by a local historian) the pilot had no surviving relatives. Taking basic career information from available listings (in books, mind you, this was way before the internet), I started to casually research the life and times of this man and the Squadron in which he flew.

Moving to London a few years later put me within range of a Pandora's box of information locked away on microfiche in The Public Record Office (now called The National Archive). Soon I had copies of combat reports signed in the hand of my pilot. But still it seemed that his personal history was out of reach, lost and forgotten. Then I noticed an annotation, written in pencil in the margin of a combat report by a previous researcher, that referred in the space of a few brief words to what I assumed was a book title. I had to see that book.

The fledgling internet was of little help, so my search for the book eventually led me through the portals of The British Library. With the help of the sterling staff there, the book was tracked down and delivered to the reading room. Once I'd read the book, written by an American pilot who also served in 1940 and containing much missing detail about my pilot, I thought I'd achieved everything I possibly could. So I published my research as a basic little website and archived my files.

A few weeks later I got an email from the daughter of my pilot. This knocked me sideways as I had dabbled in this research for several years under the received wisdom that he had no surviving relatives. A short train ride and several cups of tea later, I had the personal background to slot behind the official history and it made for a cracking story.

I would like to pretend I dashed off an accomplished first draft immediately. Unfortunately that was not the case. Running a faltering business and trying to keep body and soul together simply got in the way. A couple of years passed and my files gathered dust.

Finally, in the summer of 2001 I started to plot and write a work of fiction based on the true life story of my hometown hero. I managed to get half the story down in 38,000 words, and in November of that year I sought the opinion of an agent. Unusually the agent sent a detailed letter (which I still have). Although he deemed my writing was "fluent and intelligent" there was "some way to go before this could be exposed to the very competitive fiction market with confidence". 

And so there I left it, sitting on my hard-drive, neglected and forgotten... until January this year. Finding myself with time on my hands, during what could be described as a lull between careers, I opened the file and re-read my script.

The agent had been right, it had a long way to go... But I felt I had acquired the skills necessary to take it there...

So on 6th February a total re-write began, pruning the 38,000 words of my original text down to 28,000 and editing chapter by chapter as I wrote. On 26th February the new writing began and the second half of the story took shape, edited chapter by chapter as I went. By 10th May the first draft was finished, weighing in at 83,000 words. The very next day the first full edit began.

On 23rd May this edit was completed. The script now stood at 77,000 words and was sent to half-a-dozen beta readers. While I waited for reports I ran a second edit. With consistently good feedback from my beta readers I began the long and painful submission process to agents in early June.

So that, in a nutshell, is why I am here. And having experienced the trials and joys of the novel-writing experience I intend to stick around for as long as I can. I'm determined to get my novel published, however long that takes and, while I wait for the gate-keepers to admit me, I'm plotting out the sequel.

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