About Time - Guest Post by Tim Stevens
Like many writers, it took me ten years to produce my first novel. After a decade of false starts, abandoned ideas, hours spent sweating blood over phrasing and word choice and tone... I had almost nothing to show for it. I was the archetypal starving artist, except I was fortunate not to be starving or living in a garret. Whether or not I was an artist was also (and continues to be) a matter for debate. Then, six years ago, and a few months before the birth of my first child, I decided it was now or never. If I didn’t finish the book now, I never would. Because with the arrival of fatherhood, there was no way I’d have enough time ever to write anything substantial. Or so I thought, wrongly. Back then, I thought I knew it all. (I still think I know it all, by the way, but I’m realistic enough these days to understand that what I currently know might turn out to be utter, unadulterated twaddle in the light of further experience.) I finished the novel, redrafted it several...