Secret Prophecy

Just finished the first draft of The Secret Prophecy — it ran out at a little more than 95,000 words. As Churchill once remarked, this is not the end, not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning. Since I’m in a quotation mood this morning, let’s note too that Hemingway said ‘The first draft of everything is crap.’ So what happens now is I wait until I can approach the text as a reader might, thus discovering its strengths and weaknesses, and, in the process, produce a second draft which may or may not be good enough to send to the publisher. Meanwhile, I shall celebrate progress so far with some tapas.

Update

I always hate doing it, but one of my more pleasant New Year chores is the update of my Web site, http://www.herbiebrennan.com. It’s done now, I’m feeling virtuous and heading back to my new novel, The Secret Prophecy, after abandoning the poor thing completely for a Christmas break. I’m also feeling curiously optimistic, which is unusual for me at New Year: I have some adult projects on the go just now, plus electronic versions scheduled of some of my old gamebooks. All in all, it could be a fun year.