The Stand.

In my moments of dread before going into the place where I spend tortured days, I attempt to perfect my vision of the writing that I am working upon at the time. The last month has seen me rewrite The Piper in order to make it readable. My initial foolhardy pride had allowed me to see the forest of a novel without taking much notice of the trees. I got that last bit from Stephen King when he was writing about his writing of The Stand.

I always wanted to rewrite my Piper but was probably overwhelmed by the work that it would entail. I was probably a little afraid of cutting interesting paths in the plot; those little diversions that I believed would make the reader sit up and think, “What a clever bloke!” The truth is that I am not that clever, just a little over-egged. My original book was a pudding of a read with lots of interesting nuggets but no real narrative drive.

So it was with King Ben’s Grandma, a wonderful follower who reminds me of a no-nonsense Mother Abigail, that I started to rewrite it. King Ben’s Grandma was my stimulus and remains central to my every rewritten episode.

Reading The Piper from afar now allows me perspective. I read things that I would not feed to the crows. Dead language lay in every line and dead-ends waited for every ‘interesting’ plot turn. So my blogging of the book allowed me to cut, cut, cut. I made a path through the forest, removed anything that wasn’t necessary, and aimed to please KBG (oh, I just got the clever old broad!).

I hope whoever is reading it is enjoying it.

Mike Evans