Horse Destroys the Universe

In November of 2015 I began to write a story about a horse who destroys the universe. Four years later and here it is, a published novel you can hold in your hands. It’s been quite a journey.

It started with a simple idea, and a lot of spare time. The simple idea was to write a book. It didn’t matter what it would be about, I didn’t expect anyone to ever read it. So I picked the most outlandish concept I could think of and set myself the challenge of spinning it into a novel. After a month of solid writing I had 50,000 words. That had been my only goal at the time, but the story wasn’t quite finished. It would take another 40,000 words to reach the end of the story. I hate to leave things half done, so I chipped away at it over the next few months with whatever spare time I could afford, and finally there it was: a completed first draft.

It was a mess. A very interesting mess. But still a mess. It was a rough sketch of a novel, but if I stood back and squinted I could see something that might be worth sharing. So it became my hobby over the next three years, to hammer this story into shape. The second draft was practically an entire rewrite, and it was reaching a point where I might have considered it worthy of leaving in a drawer in my house to be discovered and puzzled over after my eventual death. But I figured since nobody would be reading it any time soon, I may as well keep tinkering with it.

Then Unbound got in touch with me and asked if I’d ever considered making a book about my video art. I told them in passing that I’d been working on a science fiction novel for a few years, and they seemed interested in having a look at it. I figured they were just being polite, but I sent it to them anyway, and to my surprise they told me I should definitely get this story published. A crowdfunding campaign was set up, and a small army of generous supporters got behind the project. A month later with funding achieved, the year-long publishing process could begin.

A year might seem a long time to turn a manuscript into a printed book. The fact is, there are several stages to this process, each involving different people with their own different schedules. A step that might take a couple of weeks work, might also take another couple of weeks for that person to become available in the first place.

The first step was the structural edit, which looks at the story as a whole to make sure all the pieces fit nicely together. This story has a lot of moving parts, so the priority at this stage was to make sure it all made sense. It all made sense to me of course, I wrote the thing. But that makes it impossible to see it from anyone else’s perspective. The most useful feedback at this stage is confusion, because that means you haven’t explained things well enough. You can’t assume people are going to absorb and understand every important plot detail you hide in there, because people don’t read like that. Or at least, I know I don’t. I can get distracted while I’m reading and miss a whole paragraph. If there was some vital information in that paragraph then too bad.

After this stage it was passed on to someone else for a more in-depth edit, where the words I used were poked and prodded, and clearer alternatives were suggested, which I would disagree with for a while before realising they were probably right. Meanwhile I was working on the cover illustration, in conjunction with the design team who added everything else that goes on the outside of a book. Another step in the design process is the inside of the book, where fonts are chosen and chapter headings are positioned. This had to wait until I had finished going through the editor’s suggestions, along with other changes I wanted to make after getting a friend to read it. You might think friends and family would be a bit too complimentary with their feedback, and while that could be true, they also don’t want you to look like an idiot by releasing something that could be better.

By this time a whole bunch of people had gone through the book from beginning to end looking for mistakes, and you’d think there wouldn’t be any left to find. You’d be wrong of course, and so the final text was sent to the proofreader. This also gave a final opportunity for someone new to point out anything that didn’t make sense with the story. And with a story like this, there is a lot of potential for things to not make sense, especially when characters are having arguments with duplicates of themselves in various layers of reality.

And so the proofreading is completed, final adjustments are made, and I have re-read this book about as many times as I ever want to in my lifetime. Off to the printers it goes. It still doesn’t seem real, even after sitting in a room signing several hundred copies of it.

If you want a copy of your own then it’s available from various online book sellers, including the Unbound website. And if you want to write a book yourself then the best advice I can give is to assume that no one will ever read it.