Type in begins - and it's like tidying up after random teenagers

TANDEM 

a G3 whistleblower novel 

I've typed in from long-hand before, but they were mostly short stories, two to five thousand words.

This is a multi-layered espionage thriller of (more than (I hope)) 27,000 words with all sorts of boxes to tick and research items to find and additional homework still to do. I did my best to annotate and record what comes from where and what needs to go where and what might be missing from, and redundant in, the original two-pager, as the story morphed and shape-changed under my leaking biro nibs. But looking back on it, it's gonna be an almighty slog just reading the scribbled words. I've always had (what they call) doctor's script, and this has been amplified (in frequency, I guess) by sometimes having written while a passenger in a moving car or on a long walk or in a state of excitement about the particular section of the book, or scene, or revelation.

What I initially started doing was 'typing in' at around about the middle of the book as I thought that would be just about where the 'feel of the book proper' might live. I typed in one chapter about Rio but I'm not totally convinced it's the right place to start - we still don't really know about the female character yet, so she needs fleshing out more. I've got the format all laid out ready to accept data in any way I want to do it. I have my green-highlighter system in the top-left corner for a started page, and a green-highlighter in the bottom-right corner for a completed page.

I decided to get stuck right in at the start of the book like a proper brave (sleeves rolled up ready for work) adult novelist would.

Writing books is a VERY EXCITING process where things that have never lived suddenly start to impose their will upon the wishes of their creator, and they're doing the same at second draft stage too. It's (for me) a very wild ride to watch characters 'come to life' literally on the page, in the space between ink and paper, and dictate where they should be taken. How they rebel against your hopes and shatter your dreams. Once you have character you have life, it seems. Has any intellectual done a thesis on 'the horrifying creation of character', surely?