Title?

Now, more than a week since my last post, my next novel continues to run along in the right direction. I'm over 75,000 words in and the end is in sight. I'm not a writer who ties things up neatly at the end, but I clearly have to find a way to conclude my work. Doing that well, it seems to me, is one of the hallmarks of good writers. To hold together the various threads of the plot, the characters and the themes, and to work out how to develop them so they reach a place where they can be let go of in a way which satisfies most readers isn't easy. And then it all has to be written down.

At this stage of a book I'm always conscious of the debt I owe to technology. How did Austen and Tolstoy and Dickens and the rest of them get on without cut and paste, find and replace, wordcount and so on? The very thought is extraordinary.

Anyway, I'm plotting and manoeuvring my way towards the conclusion, and, though difficult, I'm enjoying the challenge. And while I've been doing this I've made an important decision about the novel's title which I'm going to change from Simon Says, the working title I've used up to now. But you'll have to wait for a while before I announce the new one. I'm going to let it slosh around in my head for the time being, but I'm fairly confident I'll stay with it.