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When I began writing Just Another Week in Suburbia, I already had this scene in mind – well, not exactly this scene I’m going to post, but the gist of it. Just because you’ve gone over and over a scene in your head doesn’t mean it’s going to fit perfectly into the story when its time comes. Sometimes it needs renovation. In this case, I was just over 50,000 words into the story. The story had evolved beyond what I’d envisioned in those early stages. So had Casper. Casper had grown and developed a life of his own. I’ve seen in reviews people label Casper as ‘weak’. That irks me.…
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Before I was published, I had several novels that got close – well, that’s what the glowing rejections suggested. However, I did feel that those novels were – in their way – reserved in some areas. I was holding back. It was intimidating to put work out there where people who knew me would be reading it, and possibly judging me through what I’d written. I’m sure lots of writers feel the same. So I wrote through a filter – I held back in scenes (be they explorations of emotional vulnerability or realisations, intimacy, etc.) where I thought somebody might think of me, I can’t believe he wrote that! Going…