Well, this has never happened to me before as a writer; my first draft has turned into a second draft all by itself! Normally, I write a very rough first draft to test my ideas and pay little attention to plot, characterisation, and often dialogue unless something good occurs to me. I write this version until I am confident that I have got something that will make a novel and that was my intention with this book, but it never happened like that! At some point the rough draft disappeared to be replaced by a much smoother version, the kind I would consider as a second draft.

I am not alarmed by this occurrence really, just pleasantly surprised. From when I had the first idea about this book, I believed that it had something about it. The vision of what I want to write has always been quite clear to me, possibly clearer than with any other book. That vision is being realised although I am aware that what I have written so far, some 12,000 words, needs revision. Although I have not formally mapped the book out, the plot, such as it is, resides in my head, the writing is flowing along very well indeed. I have opened a stylesheet out of necessity, again, something that I have never done this early in the writing process. Ideas are occurring to me as I write, and I need to capture some of them immediately because they refer to events that are going to occur later in the book.

Pomerania (working title) will be my eighth novel to date and in some respects, it feels like everything that I have learnt about writing is being poured into this one project. Certainly, it is making the actual writing of it both easier and a joy to do. The crafting will come later. I am still aiming for a whimsical tale, but it will have some barbs in it; you cannot deal with life, love, and loss without inflicting a little pain. Like all my other works, however, I expect this to be a positive story when it concludes. The world of the Court of the King of Pomerania may never exist except inside my imagination and in the words that I write but it will exist; I determined to realise it.